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Book A — % 



PRESENTED BY 



CHRIST 
RECEIVING SINNERS. 



BY 



THE EEV. JOHN CUMMLNG, D.D. 

MINISTER OF THE SCOTCH NATIONAL CHURCH, AUTHOR OP "VOICES OP THE NIGHT," 
"VOICES OP THE DAT," VOICES OF THE DEAD," ETC. ETC. 



"This man receiveth sinners." 



PHILADELPHIA: 
LINDSAY AND BLAKISTON. 

18 54. 






* \ 



Gift 
Mrs. Hennen Jenntags 
April 26, 1933 



CO 
d 



PREFACE. 



The author believes that the simplicity of the 
Gospel is unjustly, but frequently, made a reason 
why many st amble at its threshold. Very often 
too, the preacher perplexes what is plain, with dis- 
tinctions, limitations, and condition, alike unseason- 
able, inapplicable, and injurious. We seem to feel 
afraid to speak out one great truth, in all its fulness 
and directness, lest we should trench upon or ob- 
scure another, no less precious. This is a foolish 
fear. All truths are in harmony w r ith each other ; 
let us, therefore, enunciate each distinctly, directly, 
fully, and doubt not that it will illuminate, not 
darken, every other. 

It is the object and aim of the author in this little 
work, to put the mode of a sinner's acceptance be- 
fore God in the plainest possible point of view, to 
induce the sinner to arise and go at once as he is to 

God in Christ, and to see and be satisfied that in- 

24 3 



4 PREFACE. 

stead of rejection, he will meet with instant and 
cordial welcome. 

The author earnestly prays that this little work 
may be made useful — extensively useful. To be 
instrumental in leading souls to God, is the noblest 
privilege, the greatest honour, and the conscious- 
ness of it, the richest reward. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The Audience , 7 



CHAPTER II. 
The Objection 17 

CHAPTER III. 
The Lost Sheep 24 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Hidden Coin 45 

CHAPTER V. 
Joy in the Presence of the Angels 63 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Prodigal Son 78 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Prodigal Son — The Conversion 97 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Prodigal Son — His Reception by his Father 112 

CHAPTER IX. 

The Elder Brother 125 

a2 5 



ffijrat fUmfoiujj §imm. 



CHAPTER I. 

Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. 
Luke xt. 1. 

We find in this chapter, three instructive parables : 
one, the lost sheep ; and the other, the hidden coin ; 
and the last, the prodigal son. I will touch, first of 
all, on the preface to the three — " Then drew near unto 
him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him;" 
reserving for the next chapter the objection of the 
scribes and Pharisees — "This man receiveth sinners, 
and eateth with them." These last words constitute, 
properly, the text ; the parables are the sermon upon 
it. The first two verses embody the great idea that 
our Lord designs to illustrate, and the parables are the 
vivid examples and illustrations of its precious truth. 
Upon this occasion, sinners and publicans — i. e. tax- 
gatherers, most obnoxious to the Jew from their pro- 
fession, and more particularly so from their severity 
and the iniquity of their practices — "drew near unto 
him." These publicans and sinners were persons no- 
toriously profane, about whose character there could 
be no controversy, and about whose state in the sight 

24* 7 



8 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

of God there could be as little. But there was another 
class that drew near to him, "Pharisees and scribes," 
of whom I shall speak by-and-by ; distinguished from 
the rest in the sight of men, but more iniquitous than 
the rest in the sight of a holy and a heart-searching 
God. When these sinners drew near, Jesus treated 
them as they had never been treated before. The 
Pharisee felt it his duty to flee from the infected per- 
son, lest he himself might catch the contagion ; Jesus 
felt it his mission to draw close to the infected person, 
that that infected person might draw in the healing 
virtue of his mysterious character. Now this contrast 
between the treatment of the Pharisee, on the one 
hand, and the new treatment of our Lord on the other, 
startled and surprised not a few, and called forth the 
expression of amazement contained in the second verse 
of this chapter. Certainly, there never was a more 
remarkable audience, preacher, or discourse : all three 
are replete with instruction and profit unto every one 
that has ears to hear. In the auditory, if one might 
venture to analyze it, were two concentric circles, of 
which Jesus was the centre ; there was an inner circle 
which stood nearest to him, composed of publicans and 
sinners ; there was an outer cirele that looked on, and 
kept aloof from him — these were the scribes and Pha- 
risees. The inner circle admitted itself to be as bad as 
the verdict of God could pronounce it : these publicans 
and sinners professed to be nothing ; they were out- 
casts in the sight of God, and they were sinners noto- 
riously in the sight of man, and they felt it. They 
were the refuse of the earth, the reproached of men, 
the denounced of justice, confessedly, and without 
apology, excuse, or covering. Then there was the 



THE AUDIENCE. 9 

outer circle, the members of which did not wish to 
mingle with the publicans and sinners, who desired, in 
short, to be saved in a way more honourable than pub- 
licans and sinners ; who wished to have a royal road 
to heaven, in which no man but Pharisees and scribes 
might walk ; and certainly, if the salvation of the 
gospel implied that the accomplished Pharisee and the 
abandoned publican must be cleansed in the same foun- 
tain, clothed with the same righteousness, and admitted 
by the same door to heaven, the Pharisee was not pre- 
pared to believe in so unsparing a necessity, or to 
accept such terms. These Pharisees were holy in the 
estimate of men, though not one whit holy in the esti- 
mate and judgment of God. With them a broad 
phylactery, that is, a robe peculiar to their sect, covered 
a multitude of sins. In their theology, a text exqui- 
sitely and luminously written upon the frontlet, was a 
perfect atonement for trampling it under feet in the 
daily wear and tear of common life. In their judg- 
ment, the offering of tithes of mint and of anise was a 
sufficient excuse for the utter neglect of the weightier 
matters of the law. Who was most guilty God alone 
can decide ; but this I have noticed, that while the 
Saviour, to the heart-smitten, trembling, convicted 
publican and sinner, spoke in tones of mercy, recon- 
ciliation and love ; to the Pharisee, the hypocrite, the 
religious pretender, he spoke in the language only of 
severe, stern, and merited rebuke. The publican and 
sinner may do society the greatest harm ; the hypocrite 
may pass through society less marked by its crimes, 
but not less criminal and guilty in the sight of God. 
But it is not ours to pronounce upon their relative 
demerits ; it is our privilege to proclaim to both 



10 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

instant pardon and acceptance through the Saviour, 
who died for both, if they will. 

It is said, "They drew near to Jesus." They "drew 
near," physically, geographically : we draw near also, 
but spiritually and morally. » Draw nigh to God and 
he will draw nigh to you;" but who does not know 
that neither the best nor the worst of mankind can 
draw nigh to God, until the attractive influence of 
God is put forth upon the hearts of both ? Our draw- 
ing near to God is our response to his drawing us. 
He says; "No man can come to me, unless the Father 
who hath sent me draw him : and every man, therefore, 
who draws near to God in prayer, in praise, in commu- 
nion, in sympathy, in faith, in love, in joy, in hope, is 
the subject of an attraction, which, begun in time, 
shall not terminate even in glory, but continue to put 
forth its sublime centripetal influence for ever and 
ever. It is specially stated, they drew near to Jesus 
Christ. What they did physically, every creature on 
earth is called upon to do morally and spiritually: 
that is, to draw near to none beside Christ, to none on 
this side of Christ, to none beyond ; above, or below 
Christ. It is an instructive fact, that when Christ was 
crucified, there was a thief upon his right hand, and 
another upon his left, as if to lead the sinner's eye to 
look neither to the right nor to the left, but to rivet it 
upon the crucified Lamb that hung between. It is 
possible for us now, when we profess to draw near to 
Christ, to draw near to the sacrament, and yet not to 
Him the substance ; to draw near to the Church, and 
rest on it, and find it is a tomb, instead of drawing 
near to Christ, and resting on him, and feeling in him 
a Saviour. And whatever in the minister's sermon, or 



THE AUDIENCE. H 

whatever in the rites and ceremonies of the church so 
rivets you that it keeps you there, and prevents you 
rising higher, is the very essence of all antichristian 
superstition. If, for instance, the architecture of the 
church should fascinate and keep you from thinking 
of Him who fills the church with his glory, it may be 
beautiful architecture, but it is bad divinity. Or if the 
splendour of the language of the minister's sermon 
should so captivate you, or if his doctrine, or his il- 
lustrations, or his metaphors should so dazzle you, that 
you lose the great penetrating, riveting thoughts they 
were designed to convey, it may be an eloquent address, 
but it is a very worthless sermon. Whatever, in short, 
keeps you from the great end and aim of all ministry 
— the Lord Jesus Christ — ought not to be there. It 
is the beauty of a proposition in Euclid, that every step 
helps you to the conclusion ; and as it is the highest 
evidence of all true architecture, all poetry, and all 
painting that everything in it and about it has a tend- 
ency to contribute to one great point, for which the 
painting or the building was designed, so in all church 
ceremonies, and services, in all preaching, in all read- 
ing, in all prayer, in all praise, we ought to be carried 
directly, and without obstruction to Him who is and 
ought to be the Alpha and Omega of all. Hence, it 
is the best creed which proclaims Christ most clearly ; 
be is the best preacher who points you to the Lamb of 
God most distinctly; and that is the best and the most 
apostolic church in which you can learn to know and 
love your Saviour most simply and directly. 

"They drew near," it is added, "to hear him." 
What they did, we also may do. What is our object 
in drawing near to the sanctuary? Is it to stop there? 



12 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

or is it our ultimate object, as it ought to be, and as 
it will be, if the Spirit of God has drawn us, to hear 
Christ ? Of all things the most pitiable is when a 
man preaches to please himself, and when an audience 
listens in order to be pleased with the minister. And 
the most glorious thing below is when the minister's 
preaching and the people's hearing lead to this con- 
clusion, not, « How well the minister spoke to-day V 
and "How comfortably did we hear to-day !" but, " How 
glorious is that Saviour ! how precious this soul ! how 
solemn our obligations ! how weighty our respon- 
sibilities in the prospect of eternity, and of a judgment- 
seat I" We may always judge of what has been the 
sermon, or what has been the mood in which it was 
listened to by the first remarks we hear as we retire ; 
when people go home criticising the words of the dis- 
course, instead of dwelling on and speaking of the 
glories of the subject, there is something w T rong in the 
people's hearing, or in the minister's preaching. May 
God grant that all that ministers preach, and all that 
people hear, may lead them to lift their hearts far be- 
yond the temple, and to leave them nowhere except 
where our heart and our treasure should be, beside the 
throne of the Lord Jesus. 

When it is stated, "they drew near to Christ in 
order to hear him," and it is added, "they all did so," 
we do not find that he said one single individual was 
present who should not have been there. Now this is 
remarkable. There were hypocrites, whom Jesus knew 
to be so : there were publicans and sinners, the most 
depraved and abandoned in the land, no less intimately 
known to Jesus : but he did not say, those who come 
to hear me must be a select circle, who have looked 



THE AUDIENCE. 13 

into the book of life, and seen that their names are 
written there, before they come to listen ; or they must 
have some other qualification of some other description. 
No such syllable is uttered. He took all that came. 
He felt there was a message to be delivered wherever 
there was an ear, however circumstanced that might be, 
to listen to him. In short, the gospel of Jesus Christ 
is an encyclical letter to the whole world ; and when a 
minister stands in his place and proclaims the gospel, 
he preaches Christ, and Him crucified, not to the elect, 
nor to the non-elect, not to the predestinate, nor to the 
reprobate, if such there be, but he preaches the gospel 
of Christ, to every creature under heaven, and leaves 
it with God to make the discrimination, taking to him- 
self only the duty of rendering clearly and intelligibly 
his message, and leaving all beyond with God. 

We read next — for every word in this verse seems 
emphatic — "tlien drew near unto him," &c. What 
was the cause of their drawing near ? It seems to me 
to have been that beautiful parable in the previous 
chapter, which describes the guests invited when " a 
certain man made a great supper, and bade many: and 
he sent his servant at supper time to say to them that 
were bidden, Come, for all things are now ready." In 
this remarkable parable the gospel of Christ, that is, 
salvation, is not described as something that we are to 
do, but something that we are to receive ; not a pro- 
cess that we are to work out, but a recipe or medicine 
that we are freely to accept. " All things are ready," 
every thing is done : you have only to come. And 
then some made excuses; but "the servant came and 
shewed his Lord all these things. Then the master 
of the house, being angry, said to his servant, Go out 



14 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring 
in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and 
the blind." Now the publicans and sinners argued 
from the parable, and argued right, " Truly, if the halt, 
and the maimed, and the hedge-way beggars, and the 
highway tramps may come to Jesus, and receive the 
blessing of the gospel, we are not worse than they ; 
and desperate as our character is, it cannot be worse ; 
and if there be welcome for them, surely there will be 
no proscription for us : at all events let us try." " Then 
drew near unto , him all the publicans and sinners for 
to hear him." 

Let us next notice the place where our Lord spoke. 
As far as we can gather from the previous chapter and 
from the parables- to which I have already alluded, our 
Lord was in the Pharisee's house, speaking to all that 
would come to hear him ; but it would appear from the 
fifteenth chapter that he left the Pharisee's house, and 
was walking to some other part of Judea, and that 
great multitudes followed him, listening to the words 
that proceeded out of his mouth. This teaches us that 
our Lord did not much mind what was the place on 
which he stood, or on which he sat. All places were 
sacred, all audiences were consecrated, when the great 
Saviour and a sinful company were there present. 
Hence we find our Lord preaching from the ocean's 
bosom, or from the mountain's brow; by the hedge 
and the highway side ; in a fisherman's boat, and in 
the Pharisee's house ; from the cross, and now from 
the throne ; all places are made holy by a holy work : 
for it is not the place that consecrates the work, but 
the work that consecrates the place. An orator may 
collect a mob ; Christ's presence can make that crowd 



THE AUDIENCE. 15 

a church. An architect may build a vast and glorious 
cathedral, but Christ descending into it in his glory 
alone can make that cathedral a church. It is the 
presence of the queen that makes the hut a palace, it 
is the presence of the Lord of glory that makes the 
way-side auditory a church ; and wherever such pre- 
sence is, and such people are, there, there is a church 
of the Lord Jesus Christ. My dear reader, the ho- 
liest sanctuary in the universe is the chancel of a holy 
heart, and in that chancel the glory that dwelleth 
between the cherubim takes up its residence still. 

We notice next in this interesting group — the 
preacher. It was Jesus, and what did he preach ? He 
spake as never man spake. I wish that all preachers 
would study less Blair's Belles-Lettres, and Campbell's 
Philosophy of Rhetoric ; less mechanical prescriptions 
and rules for making, what they always do make, most 
mechanical sermons ; but that they would study more 
our Lord's sermons. How exceedingly simple, yet 
how sublime ! words so plain that a child can un- 
derstand them — thoughts so deep that an archangel's 
mind cannot fathom them. He spoke in the most 
childlike terms, and yet never in childish terms. 
There was no turgid straining of language, no bom- 
bastic metaphors like poppies in a cornfield, no swollen 
words and blazing similes ; all was simple, direct, 
pure ; in every sabbath-school, children will listen to 
and are delighted with, and comprehend the beautiful 
parables of Jesus : and yet wherever you meet with 
what is rare, a true philosopher, wearied with his 
flight through the universe in search of truth, you will 
find one who at length will pillow his head and soothe 
his heart by reading the simple and eloquent words 

25 



1$ CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

of the Lord Jesus. Our Lord was not only an ex 
ample of the perfect believer, but he was also an ex- 
ample of the perfect preacher. And I do believe, 
though men do not naturally like the gospel- — while 
the human heart, before it is sanctified, is enmity to 
the gospel — that wherever a Christian minister will just 
speak God's truth in the simple language in which it 
should be spoken, he will not be without thirsty hearts 
and anxious souls to listen to him, A great many 
sermons, I fear, (without passing judgment upon others,) 
are like the play of summer lightning far up in the 
clouds while all is dark below. The meaning of 
preaching is not to make an eloquent exhibition before 
a people, but to make a heart-stirring, conscience-con- 
verting appeal to them. What a minister is to do 
is not to attempt to please his people, but to speak to 
the hearts and consciences of his people. Let him 
care little if there be sometimes a crooked sentence, 
or awkward metaphor, and sometimes a plain saying 
that displeases the critically fastidious taste of editors. 
I do not mind if I have displeased some cultivated taste, 
some accomplished litterateur, if I can be the means 
of awakening some conscience, and giving peace to some 
wounded spirit, and to others the oil of joy for mourn- 
ing, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. 



CHAPTER II. 

&Ije ©bjcclioir. 

u This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them." — Luke xv. 2. 

• Let me now notice the carping, cavilling objection 
of the carping, cavilling, and miserable scribes and 
Pharisees. "This man," they said, "receiveth sin- 
ners, and eateth with them." Is it not strange that 
what is the very glory of the gospel, should thus be 
quoted as the disproof that Jesus is the Author and 
the great Subject of it? If I understand the Old 
Testament Scriptures, it is declared to be the chief 
character of the Messiah, that he shall come into close 
contact with sin, have communion, or close fellowship 
with sinners, and yet not be their companion. But the 
Pharisees, wilfully or strangely ignorant of this, were 
chagrined because he had the impiety to eat with un- 
washen hands, or to speak a word of consolation to 
some poor widow, or some heart-broken, penitent, and 
afflicted sinner ; and they thought this neglect of all 
tradition, this violation of rubric and ceremonial, — 
this losing sight of the claims of the church and the 
dignities of the order, — was enough to condemn any 
man, and to show that Jesus was not what he professed 
to be, the great Messiah and the promised Saviour. 
But a chief reason, perhaps, why they objected to him, 
was the self-righteousness of their hearts. They said. 
b 2 17 



© 



18 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

If this man's preaching be true, all we have given to the 
poor goes for nothing in the way of merit ; all that we 
have done — all the learning we have acquired — all 
the accomplishments we have gathered — all the offices 
we have held — all the prayers we have made — all 
go for nothing. Self-righteousness, or the persua- 
sion that what we are, and what we have done, en- 
titles us to something better than publicans and 
sinners are entitled to—is the very last element in 
our sinful nature that leaves us. The last thing 
eradicated from the human heart and conscience, is the 
idea that if we can only do something, we are sure to 
be saved ; or that if we can only suffer something, it 
is sure to make an atonement for what is past. The 
very last, and the most difficult thing to induce a sin- 
ner to do, is to come to the Lord Jesus just as he is. 
I would undertake to persuade half the population of 
London, if I could reach them^ that God is an angry 
and avenging tyrant, ready to consume them, and that 
this is pure orthodoxy ; but it is the most difficult thing 
in the world to persuade a man that " God is love" — 
that he awaits to be gracious — that the chiefest of 
sinners are invited to his presence — that there is for- 
giveness for the greatest sin, and a cordial welcome 
for the vilest criminal. This is so difficult that the 
Spirit of God alone can do it. Yet the Pharisees, 
one would think, might have learned that this was to 
be the character of the gospel of Christ. They might 
have recollected the brazen serpent, which was raised 
to heal, not the whole, but the sick ; or the rock in 
Rephidim, whose waters were. not for those who were 
not thirsty, but for those who were dying with thirst ; 
that the manna was for the hungry, and that the tern- 



THE OBJECTION. 19 

pie, which was a national one, was for all. They 
might, too, have wondered, if Christ did not receive 
sinners, whom he was to receive ? Whom besides could 
he receive? Not angels, they might have seen, for 
they were accepted already, they were the ninety and 
nine. Then whom did Christ come to receive, if not 
sinners ? All the inhabitants of the earth are sinners, 
and all the inhabitants of heaven are but sinners 
saved. Thus, instead of its being a disproof that 
Christ was the Messiah, and Christianity the gospel ; 
the fact, that " this man receiveth sinners and eateth 
w T ith them/' has always been the most magnificent cre- 
dential of the one, and the most glorious demonstra- 
tion of the other. Here, however, was exhibited, the 
evidence of their perversity and ignorance, in that they 
made that which was the proof of his Messiaship to be 
the very reverse. The strength of the objection lay 
not in its own merit, but in their crooked judgments 
and corrupted hearts. Our Lord met with this diffi- 
culty before: "John came, neither eating nor drink- 
ing;" and they said, "he hath a devil." The Son of 
Man came eating and drinking, and they said, " Behold 
a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publi- 
cans and sinners." In short, whatever our Lord did, 
an objection was sure to be raised from it and to it ; 
if he did as others did, they said, behold "a friend of 
publicans and sinners;" and if he did as John did, they 
said, "he hath a devil." In short, there is no bad 
man in the two millions that constitute the population of 
London, who has not some reason more or less conclu- 
sive to his own mind for the course which he pursues. 

But our Lord received sinners as alike his mission 
and his glory; and this was not an isolated fact, but 



20 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

the very tone and predominating character of his whole 
ministry: "He came not to call the righteous, but 
sinners to repentance." Again, "His name shall be 
called Jesus, for he shall save his people from their 
sins/' Again, " Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh 
away the sin of the world." Again, " This is a faith- 
ful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus 
Christ came into the world to save sinners." These 
are but the great harmonies tnat revolve around this 
one central truth, "This man receiveth sinners." 
Thus the miserable Pharisee did not know that what 
he thought an objection was really a credential, and 
that what he pronounced to be the disgrace of the 
ministry of Jesus was its peculiar glory. 

But he not only receives sinners, but he invites sin- 
ners to come to him. What does he say? "Come 
unto me;" "him thatcometh unto me I will in nowise 
cast out." "If any man thirst, let him come to me 
and drink." " I am the way." If one merely heard 
that Christ "receiveth," one might think it was some 
cold judge, far A removed into the distance, who would 
receive men if they could muster strength and life 
and energy to travel the way that leads to him. 
But when we are told that he not only receives, but 
that he positively invites, the encouragement is in- 
creased a hundredfold. More than this : Christ not 
only receives sinners, he not only invites sinners, but it 
is his office to receive, to invite, to save sinners. I 
am sure many of us fail to look at Christ in this light, 
viz. that it is his very office to save. When we hear 
of a physician, we understand by this that it is his 
office to prescribe ; of a lawyer, that it is his office to 
plead, and make the most of our cause and claims; of 



THE OBJECTION. 21 

a preacher, that it is his office to preach; even so it 
is Christ's office to save, as truly as it is the office of 
the sun to shine, of winds to blow, of waters to roll, or 
of the ocean to wash its shores. Hence, Christ can- 
not refuse you; it is impossible that he should refuse 
the greatest sinner that goes to him seeking truly that 
forgiveness which it is his office to bestow. 

But not only is it his office, but it is his glory, to do 
so. Many persons have an idea, that Christ may re- 
ceive them, as he has invited them, and he may for- 
give them, as it is his office to do so ; but that it will 
be, in some degree, a compromise of what is due to his 
glory, a weakening of the severity and strictness of 
his justice. It is all the reverse: for not only is 
Christ just and faithful to forgive, but he is covered 
w r ith the greatest glory when he forgives the trans- 
gressions of the greatest sinner. Never is God so 
great as when he pardons. Never is the Saviour so 
glorious as when he saves. When he said, " Let there 
be light," and there was light, how glorious was he, 
the Creator ! But when he says, " Thy sins be for- 
given thee," the speaker is more glorious still. It is 
a nobler monument of omnipotent power — it is a richer 
evidence of divine love, to forgive a sinner than to 
create and control the shining orbs that are, as it were, 
the footprints of Deity upon the sands of infinite space. 
If this be true, how worthy is the gospel of the name 
that is given to it — good news ! The difficulty it would 
rather seem is for one that knows these things tc be lost. 
One wonders that any man can live without a Saviour ; 
that any one can fail to be a Christian, hearing of a 
Saviour who receives publicans and sinners, invites 
them, commands them to believe, whose office it is to 



22 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

save, whose glory it is to save, who is just and faithful, 
when he saves the greatest sinner; how is it possible 
that any one can continue in his sin, and perish in the 
presence of such truths? I might show the reader 
many touching instances of this. Read at your lei- 
sure our Saviour's conversation with the woman of 
Samaria : read also that beautiful statement in Luke 
xxiii. 42. Recollect the dying criminal; and that cri- 
minal's last breath giving utterance to this his last 
cry, "Remember me;" and lo! the instant that he 
said so, there came a response from the Crucified, who 
was yet the Enthroned, " To-day shalt thou be with 
me in paradise." Read John vi. 37, also John vii. 37. 
Read, as we may have often read, the parable of the 
prodigal son. 

He receives sinners ; for what purpose ? Not to 
keep them so, but to make them saints. He receives 
sinners, to sanctify them, and unhappy men, to make 
them happy, and wicked men, to make them holy, and 
slaves, to make them sons, and enemies, to make them 
friends ; and not only receives them so to make them, 
but he makes them so in order to keep them so for 
ever and ever. Are there then among my readers 
any weary and heavy laden ? are there any whose re- 
trospect of the past gives rise to fears ? whose con- 
sciousness of the present creates only smiting of con- 
science, and condemnation of heart ? Are there any 
saying, " wretched man that I am, who shall deliver 
me from the body of this death?" Hear the good 
news, " This man receiveth sinners." As fully, as 
cordially, as freely, this year, as when he received the 
thief upon the cross, or forgave the persecuting Saul, 
and made him the devoted Paul. " God is in Christ 



THE OBJECTION. 23 

reconciling the world unto himself.* 1 « God so loved 
the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life." "He waits to be gracious." " He 
has no pleasure in the death of the wicked." Why 
will ye die?" "This man receiveth sinners," may 
be read on the baptismal font, and on the communion 
table, on the pulpit, and on the Bible, and on the 
throne of grace ; and everywhere in the universe 
where a sinner is lost, it will be sounded forth, "This 
man receiveth sinners." This truth is the envy of 
demons ; it is the corroding recollection of the 
damned ; it is the blessed and glorious retrospect of 
the saint ; it is the responsibility of all that hear or 
read it ; the attraction of the guilty ; the joy of the 
ransomed before the throne — " This man receiveth sin- 
ners." Write it, dear reader, in your heart ; write it 
on the lintels of your doors ; hear it in all the dispen- 
sations of Providence ; hear it in all the convulsions 
of the earth — in the breath of winds — in the chime of 
the waves of the sea — in all sounds — in all thunder — 
in the still small voice of conscience and of truth : 
forget it not on a sick-bed ; forget it not when you 
come to die : " This man receiveth sinners." 



CHAPTER III. 

%\t lost 8 free p. 

H What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth 
not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which 
is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on 
his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth to- 
gether his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; 
for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say ucto you, that like- 
wise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than 
over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. — Luke 
xv. 4-7. 

I have stated in the former chapter, that there 
were two chief classes in the auditory of our Lord ; 
the scribes and Pharisees, who believed that they were 
righteous ; and the publicans and sinners, who did not 
even pretend to be so. I have showed, that while the 
latter listened patiently to the prescriptions of our 
Lord, the former drew elements of cavil only from the 
most precious statements that he made. What they 
did, physically, we still do spiritually; we too draw 
near to Christ ; we draw near upon the wings of faith, 
under the impulse of love ; and we must take care, aa 
I have stated, in drawing near to him, to stop at 
nothing on this side of him. Some draw near to the 
minister, to the sacrament, to the sanctuary, but in- 
stead of using these as steps by which to rise to the 
sacred shrine, to the Deity that is within, they make 
them substitutes for Him, and perish, trusting in the 



THE LOST SHEEP. 25 

ordinance instead of in the Lord of the ordinance. 
I stated next, that they drew near to Christ to hear 
him. To hear the minister is one thing ; to hear 
Christ may be a wholly different and distinct thing. 
It is possible to hear the minister and to be enlightened 
by his word, and yet hear in his accents not one tone 
of that voice that has eternal melody in its utterance, 
and power and emphasis in its every expression. We 
must therefore come to the house of God, not to hear 
the minister, but the Master. We must make use of 
the minister to introduce us to the Master ; nay, we 
must listen to the minister's words, if they be faithful, 
as the echoes of Christ's, and hear music and find 
delight in them only in as far as we can trace the 
Master's accent. "My sheep hear my voice, and I 
know them, and am known of them." 

When this beautiful spectacle was presented of men 
drawing near to Christ, sinners to a Saviour, the 
hungry to Him who could feed them, the thirsty to 
Him who could refresh them, the dying to Him that 
could heal them ; what ought to have been the remark 
of those who sat in Moses' seat ? They ought to have 
said, " What a glorious spectacle ! what a blessed 
teacher ! w T hat a happy auditory ? glory to God in the 
highest !" But they did not do so. ■ Heresy, error, 
apostasy, generally begin with the clergy, not with the 
laity. The first to teach the wrong are they that 
ought always to teach the right. The scribes and the 
Pharisees, who were the teachers of the Bible, who 
knew what was the portrait of the Messiah in the Old 
Testament Scriptures, were the first to shout with ex- 
asperated feelings, jealousy, and envy, " This man re- 
ceive th sinners." But really and truly, the objection 



26 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

they made to him was the evidence that he was what 
he professed to be. The very exclamation they uttered, 
"He receives sinners," which they, in their folly, pro- 
claimed to be his shame, all heaven now rings with as 
the proof of his glory. It is the blessed attribute of 
Jesus still, " This man receiveth sinners ;" and though 
many feel it now less than they ought to feel it, yet 
when that hour shall come in which the soul shall 
tremble and shiver in the porch by which it escapes 
to God, let us not forget that the objection of the 
Pharisee is the very essence of the gospel : " Jesus re- 
ceiveth sinners/' Our Lord replied to their objection, 
and by one of those simple but sublime illustrations 
which one is never weary of hearing. I do not know 
whether others have noticed it, but I seem every time 
I read and study the Bible, to feel that the epithet 
which is applied to the song of the redeemed in glory, 
ought to be applied to this blessed book : that song is 
called a new song ; the Bible ought to be called a new 
Bible. We know quite well that the sweetest song 
that minstrel ever sang upon earth, soon becomes 
hackneyed, and we get tired of it ; but the song of the 
redeemed in heaven never becomes hackneyed, it is al- 
ways replete with music. Most books we read^ oven 
those which are most intensely interesting and exciting, 
will not bear reading more than twice or thrice. But 
it is true of the Bible, that the more we read the 
more we desire to read. The more we know the book, 
the more we appreciate it, till we exclaim with the 
Psalmist of old, " it is more precious than gold, 
sweeter also than honey and the honey-comb. " This 
proves that it has infinite excellence. Infinite things 
alone can bear to be looked at. The reason why that 



THE LOST SUEEP. 27 

song is called new, is that it lias exliaustless melody, 
and the oftener we hear it, the more glorious and 
beautiful it sounds ; and I believe that when eternity 
has rolled cycle upon cycle, saints will still ask for 
the old song, and still feel it to be the new song ; its 
infinite music has infinite attractions ; man never 
wearies of singing it, because its theme can never be 
over-uttered nor over-expressed. 

Our Lord thus explains to the Pharisees how absurd 
their objection is: "What man of you having an 
hundred sheep, and lose one of them, doth he not 
leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go 
after that which is lost ?" How interesting is this ! 
the murmuring of a scribe was the occasion of bring- 
ing forth the music of the gospel. The wrath of man 
is thus made the praise of God. Jesus shows by this 
beautiful parable, that their murmuring at his recep- 
tion of sinners had no support either from the daily 
experience of humanity or from the most applicable 
analogies of the world, but the very contrary ; and 
hence this beautiful parable is the proof that this re- 
ception of sinners, instead of being a reason for mur- 
muring, is and ought to have been a reason for thanks- 
giving. The contrast is very remarkable between the 
cavilling of the scribe, and the mercy of Him whom 
that scribe professed to preach. Man murmurs that 
his fellow-man is saved; God rejoices that he is. The 
earthly minister of the earthly temple grieves that the 
Messiah received sinners ; the heavenly ministers in 
the heavenly temple rejoice that Christ still receives 
sinners. The contrast between the selfishness, the 
monopoly, the narrow-mindedness of the human ser 
vant, and the liberality, the large-heartedness, the 



28 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

love, and benevolence of the heavenly, suggests what 
David said of old : " Let me fall into the hands of the 
Lord :" and let us be thankful that neither scribe nor 
Pharisee, nor priest, nor pope, has the keys of the 
kingdom of heaven hanging at his girdle. 

The first and second parables recorded in the chapter, 
present one view of the love of Gocl. The last pa- 
rable, namely, that of the prodigal son, presents 
another, and, if possible, a more touching one. The 
parables of the lost sheep, and the lost coin, prove to 
us the love of God and the joy that is felt in heaven 
at the repentance of a sinner ; but the parable of the 
prodigal son, while it presents to us the love of God, 
reveals to us also the response and reflection made to 
it in the repentance of the sinner. We have thus, in 
the two first parables, the love of God commencing 
upon earth, and the joy following it in heaven. In 
the third parable, we have God's love commencing 
upon earth, and terminating in the repentance and re- 
turn of the converted and reclaimed sinner. The one 
reveals the nearer, the other the remoter result. 

These parables, too, seem to indicate progress. The 
three constitute together a glorious pyramid — a beau- 
tiful climax. In the first parable, you have a rich 
man losing one sheep out of a hundred — not a very 
great loss, and therefore the interest that he takes in 
that one lost sheep indicates the greatness of his love. 
In the second parable, you have a poor woman losing 
one coin out of ten — a loss proportionably greater. 
In the third parable, you have a father with two sons, 
and one son — his Benjamin — his beloved, going astray, 
and spending all in riotous living. We see, in the first 
parable, a loss of one out of a hundred sheep : in the 



THE LOST SHEEP. 29 

second parable, a greater loss, the loss of one coin out 
of ten ; and in the third parable, a greater still, the 
loss of one son out of two ; and therefore the joy that 
is felt at the recovery of that Bon, in the third, is great- 
er than the joy realized in the recovery of the lost 
coin ; and the joy that is felt at the recovery of the 
lost coin, is greater still than the joy realized at the 
recovery of the lost sheep. The three parables also 
reveal to us not only degrees of loss, and correspond- 
ing degrees of pain, but also degrees of guilt in the 
parties that are here concerned. The first parable, is 
that of the sinner wandering from the shepherd — a 
stray sheep ignorant of the way, and scarcely aware 
of the error into which it has fallen : in other words, 
illustrating the sentiment expressed by the apostle : 
"I did it ignorantly and in unbelief." The sinner 
was lost, though it was in ignorance, ruined ; the igno- 
rance palliating, but not doing away with the sin. In 
the second parable we have the coin, bearing the name, 
the image, and the superscription of the king, casting 
itself away, excluding itself from the currency of the 
realm, buried in the earth, and turned to no good or 
profitable account : in short, the falling from loyalty 
to the King of kings. In the third parable you have 
more heinous guilt still : you have one who had tasted 
the joy, and reaped the benefits of his father's house, 
and who, in spite of this, abandoned that home, and 
plunged into all sorts of riotous and disorderly courses. 
We have, therefore, not only the loss accumulating 
from parable to parable, but we have also the guilt of 
the sinner accumulating from the first, in the stray 
sheep, to the last in the prodigal and lost son. 

The first parable, therefore, (the one which I pro 



30 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

ceed to discuss,) must have touched emphatically the 
scribes and the Pharisees, because they might have 
recollected that the symbol under which the pastors 
of Israel were usually represented in the Old Testa- 
ment Scripture was that of shepherds. For instance, 
Ezek. chap, xxxiv. is full of the sins, the duties, and 
the responsibilities of the priests and teachers of Israel, 
under the figure of shepherds careless of their flocks ; 
hence our Lord, by using this symbol, employed a 
a figure they could truly understand, and language 
with which they were perfectly familiar. 

Let me now look at the minuter features of this 
beautiful parable. The shepherd missed his lost sheep. 
He had a hundred ; one went astray ; a careless shep- 
herd would never have observed that one in a hundred 
was wanting ; but the instant that it went astray, that 
instant this shepherd missed it. What an idea does 
this give of Christ's surveillance over us ; the eye of 
the Saviour is upon every stray sinner in all his wan- 
derings, in all his departure and apostasy from God : 
He sees him from first to last, as he missed him at the 
first. If we may apply this to a lost world — as it has 
been applied — there may be here an allusion to the 
fact, that the orb on which we live is the only stray 
one amid the orbs and worlds of the mighty universe, — 
and the last disclosures of the telescope have shown 
us that there are worlds piled, as it were, on worlds — 
that the sun, the centre of our system, is itself but 
related to another central suri — and that systems rising 
on systems, fill the immensity of space, and. reveal to 
us some slight glimpses of the majesty, the glory, and 
the magnificence of Him who made them all by his 
fiat, and groups and controls them all by his sole 



THE LOST SHEEP. 31 

power. If this be so, and if our orb or world be the only 
stray one, then He who had ninety-nine millions of 
millions of worlds all retaining their pristine allegiance, 
mused this orb the moment it wavered from its path, 
and went astray from its allegiance to the great cen- 
tral Sun of righteousness, in whose attraction it was 
originally placed. 

The stray sheep thus missed is called a " lost sheep." 
I know of no expression that can exhibit more graphic- 
ally the utter hopelessness of a sinner's state than that 
of a lost sheep. The lost dog finds his way back to 
his master or to his kennel ; a lost sheep rarely finds 
its way back to its fold ; it goes further and further 
into the wilderness, till it dies of hunger, or is devoured 
by the wolf. No lost sinner ever yet of himself found 
his way back to God. The instant that a man leaves 
God, that instant he comes under the influence of a 
centrifugal force that leads him further and further 
from God ; hell being only the deepest depth into 
which the soul under this impulse plunges : until, there- 
fore, that centrifugal force, which drives the sinner 
further from God, be changed into a centripetal im- 
pulse, that shall bring the sinner back again, nearer 
and nearer to God, the lost sheep will wander further 
and further, till it is finally and irretrievably lost in 
the depths of perdition. 

In the second place, the history of the lost sheep 
suggests to us something that we have lost. We have 
lost one thing — and having lost this, we have lost all — 
we have lost God. The most blessed fact mentioned 
in the gospel is that the sinner has found God ; the 
greatest good that the saint realizes in glory is that 
God is his portion ; and the greatest loss of mankind 



32 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

is that they have lost God. We have lost his image 
and have become defaced — we have lost his friendship 
and have become enemies — we have lost communion 
with him and have become strangers — we have lost our 
sonship and are become slaves — we have lost our 
glory, and there is stamped alike upon the greatest 
philanthropist, and on the greatest criminal, legible to 
God's eye, this vivid inscription — Ichabod, the glory 
is -altogether departed. We have lost the fountain, 
and are trying to quench our thirst from broken cis- 
terns — we have lost the sun, and are walking by the 
twinkling tapers of human reason, or ecclesiastical 
tradition — we have lost righteousness, and we are 
clothed with filthy rags — we have lost the way to 
heaven, and are walking in the read to everlasting 
ruin. How much to be pitied is man ! It is God's 
part to pronounce doom on the judgment-seat. It is 
man's part to pity and pray for the victims of so ter- 
rible a misfortune. For if there be a misfortune 
worthy of the name, it is the misfortune of having 
lost God, and life, and hope, and the way to heaven ; 
and instead of this loss being a reason for indigna- 
tion and rebuke on our part, it is only a strong reason 
for pity, for sympathy, for prayer, and for exhorta- 
tion. The Son of God who missed this lost sheep at 
the first, feels deeply interested in its recovery. But 
how comes it to pass that the Son of God should ever 
be so interested as to have interposed in order to de- 
liver us. He might have expunged this earth on 
which we tread from the galaxy of the orbs of the 
universe, and it would no more have been missed than 
a grain of sand, carried away by the wind, would be 
missed by me amid the sands of the sea-shore. Nay, 



THE LOST SHEEP. 33 

more, if God had been so pleased, he might have 
cleansed this orb of its guilty, rebellious, and ungrate- 
ful population, and have merely spoken, and it would 
have been instantly covered with millions of adoring 
sons, raising perpetual songs of praise, thanksgiving, 
and joy. What can have led the Almighty so to love 
them whose absence he could so easily dispense with, 
as to come down from that throne to which the ima- 
gination of an archangel never soared in its loftiest 
stretch, and to humble himself to a depth of agony, 
and exhaustion, and humiliation, and shame, and suf- 
fering, which we have never sounded nor felt as we 
ought ? Why did he do so ? There is but one an- 
swer : « God so loved the world, that he gave his only 
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should 
not perish, but have everlasting life." There is no 
other reason on the face of the earth — there is none 
else we can assign. As it is, let us rejoice that it is 
so. Let us feel our responsibilities in consequence of 
it ; let us be thankful who have tasted the sweetness 
of that boon, which will not be appreciated in all its 
glory till all flesh has seen the salvation of our God. 

Here I may notice the infidel objection applied to 
Christianity ; one which has been sung by Byron, and 
reasoned out by Hume, and paraded by the retailers 
on a small scale since, viz. chat they cannot under- 
stand how it can be that, if there be thousands of orbs 
and worlds as the telescope reveals to us, God should 
have taken such trouble, and concentrated such sym- 
pathy upon this little narrow nook, this far-distant 
outpost in the hosts of the mighty universe, which he 
might have brushed from his path, as a dew-drop on the 
grass, and buried in the depths of annihilation : and 



34 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

the skeptic's inference is, therefore, that Christianity 
cannot be true, because it is, as he thinks, contrary to 
the very first feelings or analogies of our experience. 
We answer, it is all the reverse. Our blessed Lord 
has shown that instead of this being contrary to all 
the analogies of human experience, it is in perfect 
harmony with them: "What man," he says, "hav- 
ing an hundred sheep, and lose one of them, doth 
not leave the ninety and nine safe in the fold, and 
go after that which was lost ? Or what woman hav- 
ing ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth 
not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek 
diligently till she find it?" So that instead of be- 
ing an exception to the analogies of nature, it is in 
perfect unison with them. We ourselves know that 
if a mother has seven children, and if the seventh 
has played the prodigal, and gone to a strange land, 
where he is exposed to peril, that, on a winter's even- 
ing, when the wind blows loud and whistles at the case- 
ment, and the storm and hail and snow are heard pat- 
tering upon the roof, that mother will think less of the 
six children that are seated round the fireside, and often 
and deeply of the lost son, who is on the bosom of 
the deep, or in a far-distant land. It shows, there- 
fore, that all the analogies of our experience "testify 
the ways of God to men;" and the objection of the 
skeptic, instead of being a solid one, is as weak and 
feeble as the miserable creed of which he is the 
victim. 

No sooner, as we read in this parable, does the 
shepherd miss the sheep, than he goes after it. No 
sooner did this world fall than Christ came after it. 
That glorious promise, sounding amid the wrecks of 



THE LOST SHEEP. 35 

Paradise, was the first footfall of the Son of God 
coming after the lost sheep. Those prophecies spread 
through two thousand years — those calls, remon- 
strances, and warnings lifted up in the successive 
centuries of the past, were the voices of the shep- 
herd sounding in the wilderness after the lost 
sheep. Those types and symbols, and sacrifices, and 
shadows — those ceremonies and institutions of the 
Mosaic dispensation, were the footprints upon the 
sands of time of the great, the God Shepherd, in 
his compassionate march from the throne of heaven 
to the cross of Calvary, in order to retrieve and re- 
cover the lost sheep ; and his greatest act — his in- 
carnation in Bethlehem — his agony and cross and 
passion — were but the crowning and visible evidence 
of his search after the lost sheep. He came, I have 
said, from his throne, he descended to the manger, 
but he descended deeper still; He that sat upon that 
throne, and could say every instant of his pilgrim- 
age, "the Son of Man who is in heaven," entered 
our grave in pursuit of that lost sheep — clasped the 
lost one in his bosom — quickened the dead one with 
his own divine love — carried it from the depths and 
darkness of the grave, and leaves it not until he 
places it a recovered soul beside him, and makes 
him to sit on his throne as he has sat down with 
his Father upon his throne in glory. What is the 
faithful preaching of the gospel of Christ, whether 
warning or promise, or exposition, or exhortation, 
but Christ by his ministers still going after the lost 
sheep ? It is this that gives a faithful sermon its 
mighty importance ; it is Christ's voice calling after the 
lost sheep ; it is this that gives the hearer of that ser- 



36 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

mon his grave and exhaustless responsibility ; for it is 
the echo of Christ's voice, and he that rejects it rejects 
the Saviour himself. What are all the dispensations of 
Providence but Christ seeking after his lost sheep. He 
comes sometimes on the wings of the storm; sometimes 
in the blaze of lightning or on the surge of the earth- 
quake ; sometimes in the shocks of successive revolu- 
tions ; sometimes in the still small voice of domestic 
suffering and private calamity : and all these are the 
sounds of the footfall — the accents of the voice of the 
great Shepherd seeking after the lost sheep. Header, 
have you lost some near and dear one ? — that loss is 
the voice of the Shepherd seeking thee. Have you 
lost the accumulation of years, and are desolate ? — it 
is the chasm created by Christ that it may be filled 
with the unsearchable riches of his own glorious pre- 
sence. Whatever be the trial that smites, whatever 
be the calamity that overtakes you, regard it not as an 
accident tumbled out of chaos, but a touch by the hand 
that was nailed to the cross, to which your right re- 
sponse is : "Lord, to whom can we go, but unto thee, 
thou hast the words of eternal life." 

But in noticing Christ's conduct in seeking the lost 
sheep, we must observe that he goes after it till he find 
it. Christ's love has no ebb and flow : it has no flux 
and reflux ; it has all the fixity of an everlasting prin- 
ciple, and all the fervour of an inexhaustible passion. 
Hence, what Christ sets his heart upon, that he will 
triumph in; his love does not falter in the worst of 
circumstances, nor does it weary in the best : it is a 
love that cannot be evaporated by the summer's heat, 
or frozen by the winter's cold. It goes forth like a 
sweet fountain that bursts from a hill-side, and pene- 



THE LOST SHEEP. 37 

trates the snow-drift which the night has left upon it, 
and turns the obstructing element into an impulse, adds 
to its volume, and rolls onward till it reaches the main, 
bearing in its bosom the trophies of its triumph — sin- 
ners saved and Jesus glorified. 

Wherever, or upon whomsoever, Christ fixes the eye 
of his love, there he will lay the grasp of his omnipo- 
tence, and gloriously save. Christ never let the eye 
of his compassion light upon a sinner without by-and- 
by letting the weight of his pow r er be felt by that sin- 
ner also. When he has found the lost, what does he 
do ? Does he begin, as some of his ministers would do, 
to scold it? Does he begin to call it by severe and 
hard names, or as some would, beat it? or does he 
drive it home weary and weak and hungry, subjecting 
it to all the drudgery of the effort ? or does he give it 
to a servant, that the servant may drag it home tho 
best way he can? This is man's way; this is what 
you w T ould do — what the scribe would do — what the 
Pharisee would do — what the priest would do. But 
Christ neither chides it, nor blames it, nor beats it, nor 
trusts it to a servant, but clasps it in his bosom, and 
lays it on his shoulder, and carries it home to that fold 
from which in its folly it wandered. How beautiful is 
the gospel ! what encouragement to every sinner is in its 
message ! What a misapprehension of that gospel "when 
men think it only a compendium of w T rath — its words 
Sinai words, instead of regarding them as the over- 
tures of love, sounding from Mount Calvary. What- 
ever be the storm he has to encounter, or the length 
of the way, or the obstructions, or the enemies that 
beset him, he meets and masters all. How complete 
is our salvation ! How complete a Saviour Christ is ! 



38 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

To use the quaint language of the old divines, "you 
must have a whole Christ, not a half Christ;" a sort 
of phraseology which is not scriptural, but yet having 
a meaning obvious to me: namely, that you need not 
only his eye to light upon you, his hand to lay hold 
upon you, his love to go after you, but his shoulder to 
carry you. » When he hath found it, he layeth it on 
his shoulder." This teaches us that he that begins 
must finish his work : he that is the author must be 
the finisher: this grace which begins in time, will ter- 
minate in glory in eternity. 

But when he lays it on his shoulder, how does he 
himself feel? Does he feel as we sometimes do when 
we have lost something, and found it again ; somewhat 
glad we have got it, but still angry that we have gone 
through so much trouble and difficulty in seeking it? 
Such is not Christ's w T ay. It may be but one sheep 
out of a hundred, yet he thinks it worth his while to go 
after it. It may be that the sheep has been recovered 
after a long and arduous pursuit; yet he feels not one 
sentiment of regret — not one feeling of chagrin, but 
lays it on his shoulder — in the beautiful language of 
the parable — "rejoicing." Whatever trouble he may 
have had, whatever care and anxiety he may have 
gone through, all is merged in the grandeur of that flood 
of joy that the lost sheep is brought back to the fold. 
It is the joy that one feels in success. " A woman in 
travail hath sorrow, but as soon as she is delivered, she 
remembereth no more the anguish for joy that a man 
is born into the world." So Jesus "sees the travail 
of his soul" in the recovery of the lost sheep, " and is 
satisfied." But his joy is not merely the joy of suc- 
cess — it is also that of benevolence. What is the 



THE LOST SHEEP. 39 

highest joy upon earth? surely the joy of benevolence. 
There is a joy that one feels when one has recovered a 
hundred pounds, that men call in their phraseology a 
bad debt, something that one had no hope of: one 
feels joy when he recovers it; and it is a legitimate 
joy. But when you have placed a five-pound note in 
the hand of some poor, pining, hungry, naked sufferer, 
have you not felt joy at that ? This last is the purest 
joy that is realized on earth. If there be one flower 
that has survived the fall, fragrant with the aroma of 
Eden, beautiful and fair, it is the joy that one feels 
when one has done good. But there is nothing new 
in this. "It is more blessed," says our Lord, "to 
give than to receive." I believe that the joy of our 
Lord w^as not merely joy on recovering one that was 
lost, but it was the joy of intense and untiring benevo- 
lence. It was his meat and drink to do his Father's 
will, and he rejoiced ever as he saw good done. It is 
said that "for the joy set before him, he endured the 
cross, despising the shame." What was the nature 
of that joy ? purely benevolent joy. And, my dear 
reader, if you have never tasted this joy, there re- 
mains one luxury for you which I envy you. I do not 
envy you the sweet things, and the costly things that 
may be upon your table, but I envy the man who has 
yet to taste the joy of clothing the naked, feeding the 
hungry, aiding the expansion, and contributing to the 
support of the cause of the good Shepherd. 

Now a question arises, which is, perhaps, more curi- 
ous than practical, but which I ought not to pass by, 
who are the ninety and nine spoken of that need no 
repentance ? I cannot make the reader wiser than my- 
self; I cannot pronounce where God has left the 



40 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

matter unsolved, but I will submit what has been 
thought to be the allusion contained in these words, 
and leave the reader to take that solution which seems 
to him the most probable. Some suppose that he 
means the Pharisees, as if he had said, You Pharisees 
and scribes believe you are justified and need no re- 
pentance — you are the just men who need no repent- 
ance, which you assume to be : I tell you there is 
more joy in heaven over one recovered unjust man, 
than over the continuance of ninety and nine just men 
that need no repentance. Others think, that it re- 
lates to the angels who are in heaven, who need no re- 
pentance, because they are sinless beings ; and that 
the joy felt in heaven is intenser from the spectacle 
of a sinner saved in earth, than from the glorious 
spectacle of millions of unfallen and adoring spirits 
that surround the throne of the Most High. But it 
does strike me that the most probable interpretation 
is, that the restoration of this lost orb to its pristine 
and predestined state of happiness, and beauty, and 
glory, when it shall be regained and restored by God 
himself, will be the greatest occasion of joy to angels 
that are in heaven. On the supposition which I have 
already made, that there are worlds peopled with un- 
fallen and adoring beings, and that this is the only 
lost and strayed world in the whole universe of God, I 
believe there will be greater joy among the angels at 
seeing this world restored to its lost allegiance, and 
in every successive earnest of it now, than they have 
ever felt in contemplating the other orbs of creation, 
which have never strayed from God. 

But practically it is of no consequence to us who the 
ninety and nine are. We do not belong to them ; 



THE LOST SHEEP. 41 

this is quite plain. The ninety and nine do not com- 
prehend us; our intensest interest must be concen- 
trated on the recovery of the one lost. Are we, who 
once were lost, now recovered ones? is the great prac- 
tical question that we have to solve. 

We notice, in the next place, the perfect safety of 
this recovered sheep, and therefore the perfect safety 
of every recovered sinner ; he is no longer wandering 
in the wilderness amid snares and pitfalls, liable to be 
torn by the wolf or roaring lion that goeth about seek- 
ing whom he may devour; but the lost sheep is on the 
shepherd's shoulder, the recovered sinner is in the 
bosom and beneath the outstretched wings of the Son 
of God ; and this is only the pictorial illustration of 
the text, " I give unto them eternal life, and no man 
is able to pluck them out of my hand." But he 
fetches it home. Home is known only in the language 
and realized only in the land of our fathers : and one 
reason, perhaps, why on the Continent they have no 
no kingdoms, is, the prior calamity that they have no 
homes. Home, I say, is musical in utterance, and 
should be sweet and delightful in experience. But all 
the homes of earth, the happiest homes in which those 
musical sounds, the glad voices of children, were ever 
heard, have shadows cast over them at intervals — they 
have wants and interruptions, clouds as well as sun- 
shine, suspensions of their joy, rough places in their 
currents. But this home, to which we shall all be 
brought, has no cold shadow, there is no risk of suffer- 
ing, there are no tears, no loss, no calamity there ; the 
empire of uncertainty and change is perished from it. 
Seraphs shall be your servants, cherubim your com- 
panions: you are come unto "Jerusalem, the city of 
d2 



42 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

the living God, and to the spirits of just men made 
perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator." In one word, 
if you wish to know the glories, and have a glimpse of 
the splendour of this happy home, you must read chap- 
ters xxi. and xxii. of the Apocalypse, in which its fea- 
tures are graphically and vividly portrayed. 

In concluding this chapter, allow me to remark, 
what a precious thing man's soul must be, that Christ 
should have come from heaven in order to save it ! 
The greatness of the interposition proves the grandeur 
of the object which he came to accomplish. The 
height from which he came, and the depth to Yfhich he 
descended, the cross he bore, the cup he drank, the 
thorns around his brow, the agony within his heart, all 
tell us in touching eloquence what a susceptibility of 
joy, what a capability of wo are lodged in one single 
soul. But, my dear reader, we are so blinded by sin, 
that we look each upon the other's face, and conclude 
that what we see is the man, and when death makes 
that face pale, we think the man is gone. It is not so. 
The man is not gone. He is no more gone than the 
butterfly when it lays aside its chrysalis state, and 
ceases to be a worm, and unfurls its beautiful wings, 
and proceeds on its way, a flower of beauty and life. 
The soul has only laid aside its shackles — cast off its 
shroud, let go its encumbering element, that it may 
spread its wing, and rise until it soars with the che- 
rubim that are around God's throne. Or, if that soul 
be not a recovered soul, the moment it lays aside its 
outer form, it sinks into a depth of wo and misery 
which no human imagination can conceive. My dear 
reader, how stands it with you, what is the state of 
your soul in the sight of God ? Recollect you must 



THE LOST SHEEP. 43 

look God in the face one day ; you must be unclothed 
upon one day ; you must stand before God with no- 
thing but the awful responsibility of having heard a 
gospel, which is a savour of life unto life to some, and 
a savour of death unto death to others. And if there 
be infatuation, which I cannot find language to ex- 
press, it is the frightful infatuation of taking care of 
your estate, your health, your fair fame, but never 
taking care of what is weightier, greater, more mo- 
mentous than them all a thousand times — the soul al- 
ready long lost, and that needs to be saved. You are 
taking care of the coat, and allowing the wearer to be 
drowned. You are taking care of the casket, and 
casting the gem away. You are taking care of the 
mere nutshell, and suffering the kernel to rot and to 
decay. You are thinking about a thousand things that 
perish in the use ; and — oh, w T hat folly ! what mad- 
ness ! what infatuated madness ! — you are careless 
about the never-dying soul, on which more interest is 
concentrated than upon any thing beneath God. Angels 
pass by all the splendour of a great city, and regard it 
no more than the glittering spangle upon a royal robe ; 
but they gaze with intense sympathy upon some stray 
sheep within it. 

How great is the love of the Son of God ! He 
loved us in our ruin. Is it not our experience that 
when we love a creature, we love that creature because 
there is something lovely in it? but if Christ had loved 
us only in that way, we had not been loved at all. We 
love the creature because it is good. Christ loves the 
creature in order to make it good. He loved us, and 
. therefore he died for us ; and therefore he seeks to 
save us. Let me ask you again the question — Are you 



44 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

recovered ? are you in the fold ? are you a child of 
God among the people of God ? a Christian ? Answer 
these questions to your own conscience — answer them 
to God ; they will accompany you to the judgment- 
seat of Christ: you must answer them when the answer 
truly given will settle the doom that never can be 
altered. 



CHAPTER IV. 

®Ijc fjibtmv Coin. 

" What woman, having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth 
not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she 
find it ? And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her 
neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me, for I have found the 
piece which I had lost." — Luke xv. 8, 9. 

I have alluded to the congregation our Lord ad- 
dressed upon this occasion, a congregation composed 
of publicans and sinners, and Pharisees and scribes : 
the first acknowledging their sins, and urging no pal- 
liation or excuse ; the last pretending they had atoned 
for their sins by their virtues, and needed no for- 
giveness, and merited not to be classed with publicans 
and sinners. I have noticed the cavilling objection 
that was made by the Pharisees to our Lord's conduct, 
"this man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them;" 
and I have endeavoured to show you that the objection 
of the Pharisee is the glory of the gospel, and that 
the cavil which was made against the Saviour by those 
thac sat in Moses' seat, is just the strongest credential 
that he was the Saviour promised by the Father. I 
have also showed that if Jesus received no sinners, 
there were none else to receive. There are none but 
sinners upon earth; and if Christ has not come to seek 
and to save sinners, whom has he come to save ? The 
fact that we are sinners, and the circumstance that we 

45 



46 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

feel so, is just the evidence that we belong to that 
class which the Lord of glory came from the height 
of his throne to ransom, retrieve, and save. I showed 
too, that when Christ receiveth sinners, he does not do 
so against his will, by a stern necessity he is unable to 
resist, but willingly; it is his delight to save : "for the 
joy set before him" — this joy of receiving sinners — 
" he endured the cross, despising the shame." And 
yet how little do we realize this and feel the full im- 
portance of it ? When we go to God and ask of him 
forgiveness, is there not lurking in all bosoms a linger- 
ing feeling that we are trying to extract from God 
what God has some reluctance to bestow ? Is not this 
a too common feeling ? — whether it springs from the 
consciousness of the greatness of our sins, or from a 
misapprehension of the goodness of God, I cannot 
say, but is it not the prepossession that we have more 
or less to grapple with, each in his own bosom, so that 
when we pray to God for the forgiveness of our sins, 
there come and mingle with our prayer fears and feel- 
ings that God is not willing, that we must try and 
overcome this reluctance, and that, after all, it will be 
but a narrow escape if we subdue his wrath, and are 
introduced into the joy prepared for his people. This, 
my dear friends, may be Pantheism, or it may be 
Deism, or it may be Eomanism, but it is not Chris- 
tianity. If there be one sentiment that spreads across 
the page of the Bible more luminous than another, it 
is this, that when the Son of God receives sinners, he 
receives them gladly, and their restoration is the ele- 
ment of a joy that flows through the length and breadth 
of heaven, like a wave from the fountain of joy, mak- 
ing glad all the shores that it touches. I said, that 



THE HIDDEN COIN. 47 

not only did Christ delight to receive sinners, but I 
said also that it was his office to receive sinners. This 
is another thought that should give us confidence when 
we go to Christ for forgiveness. When you find a 
judge in this land, you expect he will do his office — a 
physician his — a lawyer his — a preacher his ; and 
when you think of the sun, you understand it is his 
duty to shine and pour down light : when you think of 
a fountain, you recollect that it is its function to pour 
forth its fresh waters ; and when you think of Christ, 
recollect it is not only his joy, but is the very office 
for which he is the Christ, to receive and to forgive 
sinners. And if I apply to him from the depths of 
my heart for the forgiveness of my sins, I believe — 
and I say these words with the utmost reverence — that 
he can no more refuse me the forgiveness of my sins, 
with a firm faith in the efficacy of his blood, than God 
can cease to uphold and govern the universe he has 
made. It is his office. 

But I showed you more : I said also that it is his 
•glory. We have also a lingering idea, that when God 
forgives us, when the Lord Jesus Christ blots out our 
sins, it is with ' a sort of quiet compromise of his 
own glory : that, as it were, he steps down a little 
from the position that he ought to occupy, in order to 
forgive us. It is not so: the least or the greatest 
sinner God cannot forgive with any compromise of 
his justice, his holiness, or his truth. But the very 
reverse is the fact. I gather from the Bible, that 
he is covered with the greatest glory when he forgives 
the greatest sin ; that God's throne is never seen to be 
so glorious as when God's mercy is felt to be most rich. 
And, therefore, I can see the meaning of that word 



48 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

which we have never felt as we ought to feel, the word 
boldness. " Let its come with boldness to the throne 
of the heavenly grace." " Having boldness and- ac- 
cess with confidence." Why ? Because it is Christ's 
office to forgive us; because it is his joy to do so ; 
because it is his glory to do so ; because he hims-elf 
has said, which expresses all, " Him that cometh unto 
me I will not" — I would add, because he cannot — 
" cast out." Then I showed you how our Lord illus- 
trated this sentiment. He said to the Pharisees, You 
are cavilling and quarrelling with me for looking to the 
lost, and letting alone those, like yourselves, who 
think they are among the unfallen, the just, and the 
good. I am not now to speak to you : this chapter 
is for sinners — as if he had said — but I will show you 
that, on your own principles, on your own reasoning, 
it is but natural that I should leave the ninety and 
nine, be they angels, or cherubim, or Pharisees, is of 
no great consequence, as far as we personally are con- 
cerned, that need no repentance, and look after the 
lost one, who, according to your own statement, needs 
the repentance which I am endeavouring to impress. 
Now whether this lost sheep, which I explained, in the 
last chapter — "What man of you, having an hundred 
sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety 
and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is 
lost until he find it ? And when he hath found it, he 
layeth it on his shoulders rejoicing," — be our lost 
world, compared with other worlds, or one lost sinner 
compared with sinners that are saved, and within the 
fold, is of no great consequence: we are quite sure 
that each one of us has his type in the lost sheep : we 
need not trouble ourselves much about the ninety and 



THE HIDDEN COIN. 49 

nine, because we know we are not one of them ; this is 
quite plain enough ; but nevertheless, when the shep- 
herd loses a sheep, though only one out of a hundred, 
he goes after it. I told you a lost dog finds its way 
back to its master, but a lost sheep has not the least 
chance of doing so ; it will be caught in the thicket, 
it will be devoured by the wolf, or it will die of hunger. 
I told you Christ does not wait till the lost sheep 
winds back its circuitous way home ; but the instant 
he misses it, the moment it is gone, he goes after it 
with the speed of the lightning's wing, and he does 
not leave it until he find it. I showed you that where- 
ever the eye of his mercy is riveted, there the feet of 
his goodness will travel, and there the grasp of his 
power will be felt. And then I asked, when he finds 
this lost sheep, what he does with it. Does he beat 
it ? does he scold it ? does he quarrel with it ? does 
he say, as you say to your children when they come 
back again, and that very w r rongly, This is just what 
I expected ; you deserved it all : it is well you have 
got it ? This is man's way, it is not God's way. My 
dear reader, whenever you show goodness, show it un- 
mingled ; whenever you show mercy, show it unmingled. 
Let the very exuberance and excess of goodness that 
you show, be your strong hope of melting and subdu- 
ing the wickedness that you regret. When Christ 
finds the lost sheep, he neither scolds it nor beats it, 
nor, such is the tenderness of that Shepherd, does he 
send it to another shepherd, and bid him take care of 
it, because no other shepherd could be like the great 
and the good Shepherd — but he lays it on his own 
shoulder, carries it home across moor and wild and 
morass and ditch, through storm and rough way, and 
E 



50 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

does so forgetting the toil that he undergoes, and 
rejoicing that his lost sheep is found. So, my dear 
reader, it is in heaven : the moment that one sinner 
says what he feels, I repent, and my Lord and my Sa- 
viour, I come to thee ; that feeling, in the depth of the 
deepest heart, touches the electric wire, the effects of 
which are felt beside the throne of God. 

I now come to another parable, scarcely less beau- 
tiful than that on which I commented in the last chap- 
ter; namely, the lost coin. It seems, at first sight, 
to be almost identical with the former, but it is really 
not so. Our Lord never repeats the same sentiment 
under the same symbol, or with precisely the same con- 
templated effects. It is not mere repetition, nor is it 
mere identity : it is presenting the same truth under an- 
other form, enabling us to look at it at another angle, and 
carrying it with greater force, perhaps, to some bosom to 
w T hich the first parable would not convey the same vivid 
impression : for we know that a simile, an allusion that 
conveys the most kindling sympathies to one man's 
bosom, fails to elicit a single spark from another. To 
speak, for instance, to a tradesman, who has been all his 
life in London, and never beyond it, about scenes in the 
country, and shepherds and sheep, is to speak almost in 
an unknown tongue to him : his ideas, illustrations, and 
habits are of a totally different character : but to appeal 
to something connected with trade, with the transactions 
of commerce, with the intercourse of mankind, is not 
to change the thought, but to change the form in which 
the thought is expressed, and that moment he will feel 
an interest in what you say, and be profited by it. 
So does our Lord. He retains the living thought, he 
varies only the phraseology in which it is clothed. If 



THE HIDDEN COIN. 51 

the story of the stray sheep sounds most musical in the 
pulpit of a country church, the story of the lost coin may 
strike more vividly in a city or a town congregation. 
The woman misses the piece that is lost. She has ten 
pieces : one is lost, and instantly she misses it. It is 
so with our blessed Lord ; the stray sheep, Jesus tracks ; 
the lost coin, however hidden, he sees. The first case 
is the lost sheep, which he finds ; the last is the lost 
coin hidden, corroding in the dust, which Christ sees. 
A sparrow cannot fall to the earth, from its overwearied 
wing, that he does not see. A hair cannot fall from 
an old man's head that he does not superintend. He 
is in the minutest, as well as in the mightiest events of 
life ; all is seen, controlled, and governed by him. The 
sinner may bury himself in the depths of this great me- 
tropolis — he may lie in the dungeon or in the prison — 
he may be in the darkest crypt, or in the most illumi- 
nated cathedral ; he may be in the narrowest and filthiest 
lane or alley in the city ; or he may be in the highways 
of its commerce and its traffic : let him be where he 
may, let him be alone or in the thickest throng, there 
is not a thought that leaps, like a bubble on the waters, 
from that sinner's heart, that the Lord Jesus does not 
see and register before the throne. He sees the hid 
sinner, none ever go beyond his cognizance ; nor is 
there any thing in the sinner's heart that he does not 
see and hear and know. Let us pray that God may 
write upon our hearts the hundred and thirty-ninth 
psalm ; let us pray that God would make practical and 
real to our hearts this great truth, " Thou God seest 
me." Let us feel that there is nothing so minute as 
to be beneath his notice, nothing so great as to be be- 
yond his control. The eyelid of the minutest emmet, 



52 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

and the wing of the greatest eagle, he sees ; the dew- 
drop on the leaf, and the ocean that girds the earth 
like a zone, he sees. The thought of the poorest widow 
and the diplomacy of the greatest statesman, he sees 
through. If we could but realize this, that God, at 
this moment, sees as clearly all that is in my heart 
and in your heart, as if there were only two individuals 
in the whole universe, God and myself, how solemnizing 
would such an impression be ! how altered would be 
the tone ! how changed the direction of our life. 

The woman no sooner missed her lost coin, than she 
evidently felt great anxiety about it, and set about 
recovering it. The Lord Jesus Christ no sooner miss- 
ed the guilty, than he felt anxious to recover him. 
Why this anxiety ? It would have been no diminution 
of his happiness if we never had been recovered, nor 
can our restoration be any acquisition to his essential 
happiness. The woman would not have been a bank- 
rupt by losing 7Jc?., for that was the amount of the 
penny, and God would not have lost his praise, nor 
heaven have been without inhabitants, if this earth had 
been swept from its orbit, and all its tenantry plunged 
in everlasting ruin. If Adam and Eve had been the 
last, as well as the first of mankind, and this orb had 
existed as the solitary sepulchre in which the first pair 
were buried, God would have lost nothing of his 
praise ; he had only to speak, and a million of more 
beautiful- orbs would have started into being, rapidly 
as the dew-drops of the morning, reflecting his glory, 
and uttering forth his praise. Is it not then most 
mysterious to us that God should have left the ninety- 
nine millions of orbs in the universe he has made, which 
may retain their allegiance to himself, and should have 



THE HIDDEN COIN. 53 

come upon the wings of mercy to recover such a world, 
and such inhabitants as we are ? What did he say to 
Jerusalem? " Jerusalem,, how often w T ould I have 
gathered thee, but ye w r ould not;" "Ye. will not come 
unto me that ye might have life." " He is not willing 
that any should perish:" what interest can he have in 
us ? w T hat acquisition shall we prove to his happiness ? 
what addition can w r e be to his glory ? then why this 
intense and untiring anxiety that streams from every 
verse, and is audible in every parable, to save and 
recover us ? The answer is, " He loved us with an 
everlasting love, and therefore with loving-kindness 
has he drawn us." And there is no other answer that 
God has given, or that man can divine. 

We read that when the woman missed the coin, she 
lighted a candle, and swept the house and sought it. 
The first promise pronounced amid the ruins of Eden, 
the woman's "seed shall bruise the serpent's head," 
w T as the first spark from which this candle was lighted, 
and was the promise of a Saviour : this light gleamed 
brighter in the days of Abraham, brighter still in the 
days of Moses, till every type, and shadow, and sym- 
bol, and sacrifice, and person, became a candlestick, 
and the whole earth and sky were illumined by altar 
candles, lit for blessed mysteries. The whole land of 
Judea was illuminated by this light, and at last the 
Sun himself came : that Sun which now rises above 
the horizon : he is still horizontal — he is not yet ver- 
tical — he will be vertical w T hen he comes again : he 
tips every event w r ith his light, and every dispensation 
with his beams. The church is but a candlestick ; the 
minister is but a light-bearer lighted from the Sun : 
and all this is that he may find the coin that was io?$, 



54 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

It is said the woman sweeps the house when she 
thus seeks the lost coin. The dust she raised, I have 
no doubt, was great ; the confusion for the moment in- 
tolerable. So has it been in the history of Chris- 
tianity. Men quarrel with Christianity because it 
does not produce peace in the world. Our Lord has 
told us, » I am not come to send peace on the earth, 
but a sword." What is all that has been taking place 
so lately on the continent of Europe ? It is the sweep- 
ing of the European house, that Christ may find the 
lost coin, restamp it with his image, reprint on it his 
name, give it a new currency, make all rejoice that the 
lost is found and the hidden is discovered. 

The woman seeks it, and seeks it, we are told, until 
she finds it. The intensity of the Bedeemer's pursuit 
we cannot express. It is the effort of the general to 
retrieve the battle ; of skill to recover the dying ; of 
one whose fortune has been wrecked to regain it, and 
these are faint symbols of the intensity of effort made 
by him to recover the lost soul. But you say, " He 
has only to put forth his omnipotent power, and it will 
be recovered." Were we mere brutes, I could under- 
stand this. Were men mere machines, we should need 
no such process as the gospel ; it would require only 
the touch of Omnipotence, and all would be restored 
to their proper place. But man is a rational being, 
and even in his ruins is respected by God, and he 
ought not to be disrespected by himself. Our very 
wreck gives token of the splendid magnificence of the 
original temple ; and such is man's nature that God 
will not save a man against his will. He makes within 
us that will, but he never saves us against our will; 
and therefore we must expect that he will deal with us 



THE HIDDEN COIN. 55 

as endowed with reason, as furnished with affections ; 
as having heads to be convinced, hearts to be im- 
pressed — affections to be restored — sympathies to be 
kindled. He will save us rationally, not mechanically. 
We are not brute creatures to be driven by power, but 
men to be drawn by appeals to our reason and affec- 
tions. The Lord Jesus Christ setting out to seek the 
soul, seeks it in every nook in w T hich it can hide itself; 
he seeks it in every corner in which it may be acci- 
dentally concealed ; he seeks it in every hiding-place 
to which it runs. He seeks it amid the tumult of re- 
volted passions ; amid the restlessness of unsanctified 
desires ; he seeks it where we should say search was 
hopeless, and he persists in seeking it where any one 
besides would despair of finding it. He seeks it by 
our conscience, for what was conscience once ? God's 
representative. God had only to speak in heaven, and 
Adam's conscience w r as the very echo of God's voice. 
The connection between God and man's conscience was 
then like the electric wire : instant, complete, and con- 
tinuous. But when sin was introduced, a non-con- 
ducting element was introduced, an element too of ruin 
and disaster; but still, deranged as man's conscience 
is, it is not destroyed. I believe there is not one fa- 
culty that Adam had, which we have not also, deranged, 
dimmed, weakened, but in no case utterly destroyed. 
And, among the rest, we have conscience still ; and 
whensoever God speaks, man's conscience hears, and 
recognises the voice of its Lawgiver. Christ spoke, 
and the waves of the restless ocean recognised the 
voice of Him w T ho made it. And whenever God speaks 
to man's conscience, that still more restless and tu- 
multuous sea — tumultuous because of sin — recognises 



56 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

the tones of Him who originally constructed it. What 
is that sense of want that you often feel ? what are 
those checks, those remonstrances, those twinges within 
you, of which you are sometimes conscious ? what 
is that dissatisfaction with self? that conviction that 
all is not right to live with, and still less ready to die 
with? what is that terrible looking for of judgment 
and fiery indignation, when disease is upon you, and 
death seems possible or probable. All these are the 
sounds of the footfall of the Son of God in your con- 
science, seeking the lost 'coin, to restamp it, reglorify 
it, and to give it new currency in heaven. 

He speaks to men not only by their conscience, but 
he speaks to them by affliction. What is affliction 
sent for ? Many persons tell us there are always se- 
condary causes, which either create it or result in it ; 
and certainly there are secondary causes ; no one can 
doubt it : but there is a greater also ; the secondary 
cause is but a secondary wheel moved by a first wheel. 
"Affliction comes not from the ground.'' It is, I be- 
lieve, to every man on whom the eye of Christ is 
fastened, just as truly mercy from God's throne, as the 
angel that came into Peter's prison, and struck off his 
chains, and opened the gates that he might be free ; 
and who has not found it so ? The sick-bed has far 
more persuasive eloquence than the pulpit and the 
sermon : who knows not that to have a little illness is 
a greater element of sanctification than to hea*r many 
a sermon ? And when we are visited with bereave- 
ment — when bonds we thought lasting are broken — 
when ties we thought were strong are dislocated — 
when names that were like household words have be- 
come, silent, and faces on which we gazed with delight 



THE HIDDEN COIN. 57 

are pale or buried in the grave: the desolation — the 
aching desolation which bereavement has left behind 
— enables us to hear God's voice sounding in the still- 
ness and silence of the chasm — "Prepare to meet thy 
God." It is good for us that we are sometimes af- 
flicted : they are to be pitied who have been least af- 
flicted ; but happy is he whom the Lord chasteneth ; for 
though " no chastening for the present seemeth to be 
joyous, but grievous," yet afterward it worketh out a 
far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory "unto 
them which are exercised thereby." 

Christ seeks us, and comes after the last coin in the 
preaching of the gospel. What is the reading of the 
Bible? Christ's voice seeking us. What is that 
word which the preacher speaks? or that thought 
which goes to the very depths of your heart? It is 
Christ seeking you. And whether he speaks to you in 
the music of his promises, or in the thunders of his 
threatening^ or in the still small voice, " Come, all ye 
that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest:" whether in short he speaks to you in judgment, 
or in mercy, it is Christ in pursuit of you, seeking the 
lost coin that he may restamp it, and give it again its 
ancient or a better currency. 

In this parable we read that wherever he thus seeks 
he will find it. I showed when the shepherd went after 
the lost sheep, he did not desist from his pursuit until 
he found it. It is so w T ith Christ Jesus. Wherever he 
has set his heart to find the hidden coin, there you 
will see his hand recovering and restoring it. Then 
we have stated the result of his finding this lost coin, 
or, in literal phraseology, the lost sinner. We will 
reserve for the next chapter the two facts which I have 



58 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

not yet commented upon, namely, the joy in the pre- 
sence of the angels, and the greater joy over one sin- 
ner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just per- 
sons that need no repentance. If I understand the 
gospel, it is not that we are first to repent, and then to 
believe in the Saviour, but if I do not misinterpret, it 
is that vre are first to believe and then we are to re- 
pent. If you seek, my dear reader, to extract repent- 
ance from your heart before you go to Jesus for for- 
giveness, you seek the living among the dead, you seek 
for life, and of course you seek in vain ; but if you go 
to God, to seek from him who is exalted to bestow it, 
the repentance you need you will not seek in vain. 
Christ finds the lost sheep; then there is repentance; 
Christ finds the lost coin hidden, then there is repent- 
ance. Christ is " exalted a Prince and a Saviour to 
give repentance." All this implies that we recognize 
him as thus exalted on his throne before we obtain 
that repentance. It was Christ's ]ook on Peter that 
created in Peter responsive repentance, and until Christ 
looks upon us, and we see sin, not as committed against 
the Legislator, or the Creator merely, but as committed 
against the crucified Redeemer, the Saviour, the Inter- 
cessor on the throne, we shall never see sin in the right 
light, or at the right point of view, or in its real essen- 
tial and terrible hideousness in the sight of God. 

In the next place, if Christ should be thus looking 
for you, then, my dear reader, seek, if possible, in the 
providence of God, to place yourself in the way of his 
finding you. It is true there is no nook in which you 
can hide where he does not see you, but it is as true 
that there are certain walks, and paths, and places 
where he has promised to meet you. Do not run from 



THE HIDDEN COIN. 59 

the reading of the Bible, from the faithful preaching of 
the gospel, do not try to escape from a twinge of con- 
science that you do not like, but try to believe that 
Christ may remove it: do not try to escape from con- 
victions that rankle in your mind, and say, I will not 
go to the house of God till my conscience is a little 
more stupified, till this uncomfortable feeling be gone 
away. It is true that by such a course the uncomfort- 
nbleness would be removed, but it would be like the 
plan of unskilful physicians who would try to remove 
a disease by deadening the feeling of it, not by striking 
at the root and essence of it. And do not try to run 
from Christ by hiding yourself in your own passions 
and your own prejudices. Many persons seem to 
spend life in raising clouds of distrust, and doubt, and 
fear, and difficulty, as if they sought to escape the eye 
of Him whose eye would pity them. When a cloud 
comes betwen you and the sun, it is not the sun that 
has ceased to shine, — the cloud is not near the sun 
though it is near us; but the practical effect is the 
same : and when we lose our sense of the presence, and 
the favour, and the acceptance of our Lord, do not 
think that that glorious sun has set behind the horizon, 
but that some prejudice, some doubt, some distrust, 
something in our mind has arisen to conceal from our 
view Him under whose wings there is healing. 

I cannot but notice, how intense is the love of the 
Lord Jesus Christ to his people. His whole career on 
earth was a pursuit of rebels, of sinners, of men that 
said, » Ave will not have this man to rule over us," — of 
men that said, " crucify him, crucify him." And for 
what did he pursue us? and for what does he pursue 
us still ? Most naturally, you would expect to destroy 



60 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

us. But the whole language of Scripture declares 
that he is come to seek and to save that which was lost. 
Notice all the miracles that our Lord did; every mi- 
racle not only was the evidence of power which could 
crush, but was the demonstration of love and goodness 
which he wished us to feel and to respond to. He did 
not smite his foes with famine, but he fed the multi- 
tudes with bread ; he did not palsy the arm that was 
raised up to smite him when he was carrying the cross, 
but he healed the palsied hand, and enabled the cripple 
to leap like the roe ; he did not strike dumb the men 
that reviled him to his face, but he opened the mouth 
of the dumb ; and unstopped the ears of the deaf, that 
they might praise him and hear him. His whole path 
from the manger to the cross was luminous with mercy 
and love, and his one great object was to seek and to 
save that which was lost. His w T hole teaching, too, 
was of the very same stamp and description. Read 
his remonstrances, read his parables, read his invita- 
tions : you never find the Saviour speak the language 
of rebuke and condemnation, except where there was 
hypocrisy. It is most remarkable that to a hypocrite 
he spoke in tones of awful severity ; because, I believe, 
if there be one sin more odious to God than another, 
it is wallowing in sin, and gilding it over with religion 
that the sin may pass current as virtue, and that we 
may get ecldt among mankind : but when a poor sinner 
woman was dragged before him — when guilty publicans 
gathered round him, his voice was a voice of mercy, 
his act forgivness, his language cordiality and welcome. 
He seems in all his teaching to have been a glorious 
magnet let down from heaven to draw lost sinners 
from their hiding-place, and bring them for ever to 



THE HIDDEN COIN. 61 

himself. He declares that the great object of his 
teaching was "not to condemn the world, but to save 
the world." And beautiful was that teaching indeed! 
A bouquet of wild flowers, a cluster of ripe fruit, a 
mother with a babe in her bosom, a poor widow going 
with her mite to the temple, a field of wheat, the sea- 
shore, the river, these were the nuclei of gracious 
thoughts which he uttered for us, and those thoughts 
were the embodiments of infinite mercy; and all he 
said, and all he did, was such that it could be said, 
"no man ever spake as this man;" and it might be 
added, " no man did as this man;" and it might be 
added yet further, " no man died as this man." He 
gave his life for the sheep, a sacrifice for our sins; and 
he is now sitting upon his throne, still seeking to save 
the lost. He controls providence, directs events, 
overrules all things, if peradventure he may find us. 

If this be so, let me ask you, are you coins once lost, 
but now found ? Were you once blind, but do you 
now see ? Have you reason to believe, in the language 
of the first parable, that the shepherd has raised you 
on his shoulder, and has begun to carry you home re- 
joicing ? Have you any reason to believe, in the lan- 
guage of the second parable, that the lost coin has 
been rescued from the rubbish by which it was covered, 
and has been drawn by a heavenly attraction to Him 
who is the great magnet of the universe, and having 
been stamped with his image, has been inscribed with 
his name, and is no more the worthless currency of 
Cseser, but the precious currency of heaven? In other 
words, have you renounced the sins that you practised, 
the lusts that you cherished, the evil passions that you 

were conscious of? and can you say from the heart, 
F 



62 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

"I love what once I hated, I delight in what once I 
ran from ; a day in God's house is better than a thou- 
sand in the tents of sin ; God's word is sweet to my 
taste, and precious in my estimation ; I count all 
things "but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of 
Jesus Christ my Lord." My dear reader, it is well if 
we can speak thus now : we know not when the sick- 
bed and death-bed may come. We know not when we 
may be summoned to our Judge, or our Judge come to 
us. We live in days that are pregnant with stupend- 
ous events, and heaving the whole heart with convul- 
sive throes, as if creation were groaning and travailing, 
waiting for its approaching deliverance. " We know 
not what a day may bring forth." At all times we 
may die. Are your lamps burning ? are your loins 
girded, as men ready for their Lord ? My dear reader, 
to be at peace with God will not make you one whit 
less industrious, or one whit less beautiful in all the 
relationships of life. You say you have no time to be 
a Christian. What time did it take the jailer of Phi- 
lippi ? What time did it take Saul of Tarsus ? " What 
must I do to be saved ?" was the cry of agonizing de- 
spair one moment : the prescription was instantly given, 
" Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be 
saved;" and the next moment, the jailer "believed 
and rejoiced with all this house." Do you think he 
was a less effective servant of Caesar, after he had en- 
tered the service of Christ ? I believe that it will be 
found that in all the departments of life — in the army, 
in the navy, in the Parliament, in all professions, in 
all trades, in the shop, the warehouse, anywhere, and 
everywhere — the most devoted servants of the Lord 
Jesus Christ are the best servants of Caesar. 



CHAPTER V. 

|foir in' tbc IJnsmce of tlje glugels. 

1 I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner 
that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which 
need no repentance." — Luke xv. 7. 

In the declaration that there is joy among angels 
at a sinner's repentance, Christ showed by an appeal 
to heaven, of which earth ought to be a copy, that if 
there was joy in the presence of the angels, that never 
fell, over one lost sinner restored, there ought not to 
be grief or chagrin among the just ones, if such they 
were, that Christ w T as sent to recover sinners. He 
supposes, for argument's sake, the Pharisees were the 
ninety-nine just persons, and then he shews them by 
illustrations the most beautiful, drawn from the earth, 
and by a fact, the most interesting recorded of heaven, 
that instead of regret and disappointment, there ought 
to be nothing but joy at the restoration of sinners. A 
shepherd with an hundred sheep, if he lose one does not 
say, what does it matter to me ; no great loss ; here 
are ninety-nine left : I will find a source of joy in the 
ninety-nine that are in the fold, and I shall feel very 
indifferent about the one that is gone. Whether it be 
buried in the snow-drift, or be devoured by the wolf, 
or perish of hunger, I shall neither hear its groans, 
nor see its struggles. This may be Pharisaism, but 
it is not nature. Nature shews us that the shepherd 

.29 63 



64 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

leaves the ninety and nine safe in the fold, and goes 
after that one which was lost ; so, he says, it is with 
the Son of God. He has ninety-nine orbs, it may be, 
that retain their allegiance, and one stray planet, the 
earth, which has broken loose from its orbit, and come 
under a new and destructive attraction. He leaves 
the ninety and nine orbs that bask in their primeval 
sunshine, and roll on in their first harmony, and goes 
after this stray planet that has lost its attraction, and 
come under a terrible eclipse, and will be plunged in 
everlasting night, unless it be retrieved and recovered. 
I have omitted to state what, perhaps, is of some in- 
terest, that if this refers to ninety-nine worlds that are 
not fallen, and this one world which has fallen, as Chal- 
mers has tried to shew in once of his most eloquent 
astronomical discourses, then it teaches us that this 
world, as a whole, is a lost and a fallen one, and that 
nothing, however excellent in it, can be a compen- 
sation for the fact that it is in a state of disruption 
from the sun, by which it should be controlled. It is 
just the way in which we meet the difficulty of upright, 
benevolent, honourable, generous men, who say : 
" What ! do you mean by stating God will condemn 
us, who pay every man his due — who never were guilty 
of any dishonourable act — who have ever pursued a 
course of generosity and philanthropy, around whom, 
orphans crowd and bless us, and widows kneel to pray 
for us ? are we also to be regarded as perishing ?" 
I answer, yes. It is said, "unless a man" — whosoever 
he may be — "be born again, he cannot see the king- 
dom of God." Suppose a world has gone astray, in 
the way in which I suppose this to have gone astray : 
let it retain all its primeval verdure and beauty — there 



JOY IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ANGELS. 65 

is nothing in it, however beautiful, that can possibly 
atone for this one fact, that it has left the orbit in 
which God placed it, wherein its mission, its function, 
and its duty lay. In vain it retains its beautiful land- 
scapes, its fair gardens, its homes covered with sun- 
shine, its peaceful people, its meandering streams, 
its brave and noble sons, all that we can conceive 
to have been originally created in it, for all this is 
no compensation for the first grand outer fact that 
it has gone astray from the great centre to which it 
ought to gravitate, and round which it ought con- 
tinuously to move. Or, to use another illustration, 
suppose, for instance, that Ireland were to break loose 
from England and Scotland, and refuse to be subject 
to the same laws and government : and suppose that 
after Ireland had been mastered by a power she was 
unable to resist, the heads of that country were to 
:ome and say to our Government, "We have been a ■ 
rery peaceful, industrious people, notwithstanding our 
disruption; we have had no great crimes perpetrated 
in the midst of us; we have been internally happy and 
prosperous : our fathers have been attached to their 
homes, our children have been dutiful to their parents, 
our people obedient to the magistrates ; these facts 
must and will surely exculpate and acquit us." The 
answer of our Government would be, no internal ex- 
cellence in you can be an atonement for the great 
crime you have committed in breaking loose from the 
government to which your first, best, and truest alle- 
giance is due. Your internal order is no excuse for 
your external rebellion. So is it with this our world : 
no excellence that it may have on it or within it can 
be atonement for its first apostacy from God. It is 



66 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

a revolted world. I have read and heard the remark, 
that it is altogether inconsistent with all idea of the 
greatness of God, and the dignity of Deity, that 
having worlds around him without number, and hav- 
ving the power to create more, he should have taken 
such pains and trouble about this little speck that 
he might have expunged without its being missed, 
as to have sent his own Son to become incarnate, 
bleed, and suffer, and die, to retrieve it. If the re- 
storation of this world were the only thing intended, 
all analogy, as I have already proved, would still 
shew the invalidity of the objection ; but I believe 
that the recovery of this world is not the ultimate 
object of our Saviour's incarnation. I believe this 
world is yet to be the moral capital of the universe ; 
that from this sequestered nook in infinite space, 
ten thousand times ten thousand orbs are to learn 
new lessons, and gather new proofs of the glory of 
God. Just as the capital of the country becomes 
the seat of legislation, to which all the provinces 
look, so this same little orb, small and insignificant 
as it may appear, will be pke lesson book of the 
universe : and at this moment the inhabitants of un- 
fallen worlds may bow down to gaze and wonder, 
first at the infatuation of man, and next at the in- 
finite and unfathomable mercy and love of God. 

But I desire to dwell more directly upon the text I 
have quoted, " there is joy in the presence of the 
angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." The 
first instance in which we read of joy among the 
angels, is at the completion of creation. " The morn- 
ing stars," that is, the angels, we are told, " then 
sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for 



JOY IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ANGELS. 67 

joy." The next occasion on which we read of the joy 
of angels, was when Christ was born : "We bring you 
glad tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people :" 
and the third occasion — and this shews the stupendous 
nature of the event — is when one sinner repents and 
turns to God. Three great things, which the natural 
man would be the last to place in the same category, 
are so placed by God ; the creation of the world, the 
incarnation of a God, the regeneration of a lost and 
ruined soul. One reason, perhaps, why angels thus 
rejoice, may be their infinite benevolence. I do not 
know higher benevolence than rejoicing at good, in 
which the rejoicing one has no share. When we re- 
joice at natural blessings which reflect their benefits 
upon us, there may be something selfish in our joy, but 
when we rejoice at blessings tasted by others, but 
denied to us, then our benevolence rises from being a 
human thing, and becomes almost divine. Angels 
have no share in the benefits of our restoration — they 
never felt any need of repentance, and can derive no 
good from seeing it, and yet they rejoice when one 
soul is born again. Another cause of their joy may 
be their perception of the nature, and their feeling of 
the hatefulness of sin. I believe that we have no 
adequate conception of what sin is. The very blunt- 
ness of our moral perceptions, the effect of sin, pre- 
vents us from seeing the intensity of force concen- 
trated in that monosyllable — sin. Angels saw it when 
it struck at the attributes of Deity in heaven ; and the 
rebellious angels felt they saw it too, when it rose up 
against God, in that Paradise which his own smile had 
made so beautiful, and his own breath had made so 
fragrant, and they hated it. They saw sin drag the 

29* 



68 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

Lord of glory from his throne, nail him to a cross, lay 
him in a stranger's grave. Angels have seen what 
havoc the trail of the fell serpent has left upon the 
earth, from Paradise lost till Paradise again shall be 
regained. And ever as they see one soul delivered 
from its bonds, comprehending as they do its real 
nature, they see sin loosening its gripe— its empire so 
far broken — the prospects of its tyranny destroyed, 
and so intensely do they hate it, that the emergence 
of even one from that sea of ill, which seems to have 
no bounds — from that dead sea, where 

" Death lives, life dies, and nature breeds perverse 
All hateful, all abominable things." 

they rejoice, and thus there is joy in the presence of 
the angels of God. 

Another cause why angels rejoice at the rescue of 
one soul, is not only their hatred of sin, but their de- 
light in holiness. I believe that what beauty is to us, 
that holiness is to them ; the splendour of the sky, the 
beauties of a landscape, the tints of a flower, what- 
ever is beautiful in nature, are in their impressions on 
our senses dim and imperfect exponents of the effect 
that perfect holiness has upon the unfallen. Holiness 
is true beauty, and beauty is but an outward type or 
symbol of holiness. Wherever holiness has begun to 
be, beauty begins to develop itself; and so at the sight 
of one seed of approaching Paradise cast upon the 
earth, there is joy in the presence of the angels. 
Another cause is no doubt their estimate of the great- 
ness of one soul. There is one thought which I have 
always tried to feel, but have failed to feel as I ought, 
namely, the greatness of man's soul. The more I 



JOY IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ANGELS. (39 

think of it, the more I am convinced that the most 
magnificent created thing in the earth is man's soul. 
What capacity of wo ! what susceptibility of joy ! 
what latent powers to be developed ! what giant fa- 
culties ! how worthy of a God to make it ! how need- 
ful was the interposition of a God to redeem it. That 
soul is not something that is the monopoly of a king ; 
it is thy soul and my soul, that which thinks and feels, 
and loves and hates within us ; that which has immen- 
sity for its home, eternity for its duration : that which 
has once begun to live, but which the worm that never 
dies cannot kill, which the fire that is never quenched 
cannot consume, which will last and live and feel the 
intensity of endless joy amid the splendours of the 
beatific vision, or the intensity of indescribable agony 
in the realms of everlasting pain. Angels fathom its 
capacity, and when angels see such a magnificent 
thing retrieved from wreck, and from being the victim 
of such misfortune, and made the adopted son of God, 
can we wonder that there is joy in the presence of the 
angels over so august and impressive a spectacle. An- 
other cause of angel joy at the recovery of one lost 
soul is their ever seeking and delighting in the glory 
of God. God made the universe to reflect his glory, 
and He will yet remake this marred orb to reflect it 
again more brilliantly than at first. God will not lose 
one ray of his glory by its fall ; on the contrary, I believe 
there will be thrown up from this recovered orb an in- 
tenser glory to Deity than ever shall be reflected from 
all the other worlds in infinite space. They all reflect 
his power and goodness, but this world most brilliantly 
his mercy, his love, his truth, his justice, his holiness. 
And when angels see a soul restored, they see in that 



70 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

soul a focus of God's glory ; they see a new luminous 
point upon the earth radiating that glory. They see 
a monument of how good, how just, how holy, how 
merciful God is, and they rejoice as they see it. They 
see in one recovered soul, a whole panorama of wonder, 
of beauty, of glory; they see there the condemned 
acquitted, the diseased healed, the lost found, sin des- 
troyed, the sinner saved; God just while he justifies 
him, holy when he embraces him, faithful to his word 
while he acquits him, and true to all his threats and 
all his promises, when, from being the heir of misery, 
he makes that soul the inheritor of glory. Truly 
there is ground for joy among the angels at such 
triumphs. They see also in the recovery of one lost 
soul, another stone taken from the arch of Satan, ano- 
ther element of Satan's power removed, and a new 
element contributed to God's glory. And ever as they 
see one stone taken from the arch that Satan reared, 
one victim of the curse made the recipient of a bless- 
ing — ever as they see approach nearer that day when 
Satan shall be bound, and his victims shall be free — 
ever as they see a fore-light of approaching heaven — 
a first-fruits of a regenerated world — the fore-taste of 
that blessed day when they shall rejoice, not ever a 
soul recovered here, and a sinner retrieved there, but 
over mercy and truth that shall meet together, and 
righteousness and peace that shall kiss each other, and 
a world that closes, as it commenced, with Paradise, 
and mankind the reflection of the happiness and ho- 
liness that are before the throne of Deity, they unani- 
mously rejoice. 

These, then, are some of the grounds on which we 
may suppose that "the angels rejoice over one sinner 



JOY IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ANGELS. 71 

that repenteth." But there occurs a question inter- 
esting, not in connection with the points I have stated, 
but specially interesting in connection with controver- 
sies that have been mooted upon this passage. I need 
not inform you that as often as you attempt to reason 
with those who say that you ought to pray to angels, 
and ask their intercession, and you make the objec- 
tion, "how is it possible that an angel who is a finite 
creature, can know what may be transacted at the 
same moment in a thousand different parts of the 
globe ?" the invariable answer is, " there is joy in the 
presence of the angels of God over one sinner that re- 
penteth." Angels are ministering spirits to them 
that shall be heirs of salvation;" if so, they may di- 
rectly know it. But by whatever means ministering 
angels know this fact, it is not said here that those 
angels who are ministering upon earth know it, but 
that the angels in heaven know it : and in the third 
place, in whatever way angels in heaven know of this 
transaction upon earth, this passage does not shew 
that they know it of themselves directly by some in- 
herent excellency in their nature, but seems rather to 
prove that they know it only by being told it: if we 
read each parable in succession, and notice how it 
closes, it will be seen that this interpretation is truly 
textual and fair. For instance, in the lost sheep : the 
shepherd loses one sheep out of a hundred. Then what 
does he do? he goes after it until he finds it. What 
does he then do ? he lays it on his shoulder rejoicing, 
i. e., the shepherd, the proprietor of the sheep rejoices 
when he finds it. What does he next do? when he 
comes home — home corresponds to heaven, in the pa- 
rable — "he calls his friends and his neighbours to- 



72 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

gether,, — these correspond to the angels in heaven — 
and he « tells them" — what they are otherwise igno- 
rant of — " rejoice with me, for I have found the sheep 
which 1 had lost." So he adds, in the same manner 
and exactly so, « there is joy among the angels of God 
over one sinner that repenteth." Now what would be 
the fair and honest construction of that text but this, 
that when the Lord of glory recovers a lost, stray, and 
immortal soul, he is so delighted with the recovery, 
that he calls together the angels of heaven, and tells 
them, that having rejoiced over a new 7 -born world, and 
having rejoiced over an incarnate God, they may now 
learn an event as glorious, or only next in glory, a lost 
soul recovered, and he bids them rejoice; and then 
and thus there is joy in the presence of the angels. 
If we take the hidden coin, it teaches the very same 
thing. The woman sweeps the house till she finds the 
coin, and when she has found it — notice how tho- 
roughly the whole is guarded — " when she has found 
it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together/' 
who did not know that it had been lost, or, at all events, 
did not know that she had found it, and she says, "re- 
joice with me, for I have found the piece which I had 
lost." "Likewise," he adds in the very same manner, 
" there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over 
one sinner that repenteth." Christ, the shepherd of 
the sheep, calls them together, and bids them rejoice. 
Whether it be right to pray to angels or not, I am not 
now discussing, absurd and unscriptural idolatry as I 
can prove it to be. Whether ministering angels upon 
earth know any thing about us or not, this is not the 
place for determining ; but this I think I have shewn, 
that no member of the Church of Rome, or of any 



JOY IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ANGELS 73 

communion holding kindred sentiments, may quote this 
passage to prove that angels in heaven know directly 
what is transacted upon earth: on the contrary, the 
moment they refer to the passage, you may tell them, 
that instead of proving their view, it proves most con- 
clusively the very opposite, namely, that the angels 
know nothing about it till the great Shepherd of the 
sheep tells them and bids them rejoice. 

Having noticed the grounds upon which angels 
rejoice, let me draw from this passage a few reflec- 
tions. 

How great must be the event, a sinner repenting, 
when this occuring upon earth produces an echo in 
the hearts of angels in heaven. How brilliant must 
this fact be, when we find its glory reflected unspent 
and undimmed before the throne of God himself. Let 
us learn how stupendous that must be, however de- 
spised and overlooked by the wise and the learned of 
the world, from which a ray of light beams through 
infinite space, and plays the most luminous upon the 
throne of God. Let us learn, in the next place, the 
greatness of this event, from the fact that angels still 
rejoice over it, just as they rejoiced over it when Adam 
was first born again. In other words, it has not come 
to be common by repetition, or ceased to create a fer- 
vid enthusiasm by frequent reiteration. We know 
that nothing but the most beautiful things can bear to 
be looked at often : none but the most exquisite har- 
monies can bear to be heard often: things that are 
sweetest pall in time, the guilding wears off, and the 
possession itself is cast away in order to give place to 
another. There must be, then, some infinite grandeur 
in the restoration of a lost soul, seeing that it is in 



74 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

the nineteenth century as electrifying a phenomenon 
among the angels as it was when the first soul repented, 
and the first sinner was born again. Angels never 
weary with- studying Christ's Gospel: angels rejoice 
no less after the lapse of four thousand years at the 
restoration and recovery of one lost soul. 

Let us notice, in the next place, that moral and 
spiritual things are evidently the most intensely inter- 
esting to the angels and to the inhabitants of heaven. 
There are around those angels material glories which 
no man's unpurged eyes could bear to look upon. They 
have scenes of beauty, magnificence, and splendour 
which we shall see, but which now, because of the 
feebleness of our eysight, we could not bear to gaze 
on : yet these angels turn aside from all the material 
splendours of their glorious home, and gaze, w T ith ar- 
rested and rivetted delight, upon this one fact, that a 
soul has repented and returned to God. They see as 
the most beautiful diamond that sparkles on the brow 
of heaven, the tear that drops from a penitent's eye. 
Amid the sounds and melodies of cherubim and se- 
raphim about the throne, — among the harmonies of a 
thousand harpings, whose music we have no adequate 
conception of, the sigh of a broken heart penetrates 
and rings fullest of sweet melody to an angel's ear. 
An ancient writer has w T ell said, that the tears of pe- 
nitents are the wine of angels ; i. e., their greatest joy 
is derived not from the material splendour of their 
abodes, nor from the innumerable angels that form the 
choirs in heaven who have never fallen ; but from the 
news borne from this lost orb of a soul repenting, a 
sinner saved. Thus, events which man calls great, are 
not known, or are not thought worth mentioning in 



JOY IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ANGELS. 75 

heaven ; but an event which most men look upon as 
very small, is thought worthy of a response of joy in 
heaven. For instance, that an heir is born to the 
throne is not noted among the angels. But in some 
poor little chapel, with a few forms and benches for 
its people, and with an imperfectly educated man for 
its minister, God blesses his own word, some weary 
soul is born again, and that event electrifies the angels 
that are in heaven. A monarch is swept from his 
throne, that throne is consumed upon the streets, a 
nation rises in its phrensy, and turns all things up- 
side down ; angels take far less interest in this : but 
in the midst of the crash and the confusion, some one 
has been thrown upon his knees — some heart is brought 
to hope and believe and trust ; — and angels hail the 
event with rejoicing, for there is joy in the presence of 
the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. 
The earth is thus interesting to heaven just in pro- 
portion to the number of souls who are born again in 
it. Those spots which are beautiful to angels are those 
where souls are born again : they look at all things 
only as subsidiary to this great and blessed result. 
May we not also infer, that the repentance of a soul 
born again, is not a transient and evanescent thing ? 
I have heard some persons say, that a man may be a 
child of God to-day, and a child of the devil to-mor- 
row ; that he may be accepted, adopted, and justified 
to-day, and may be under the curse, condemned, and re- 
probate, and lost to-morrow. I cannot believe it: I 
cannot think that such an event as being born again, 
according to such theology, w^ould be worth angel's re- 
joicing; it would only be a soul changed to-day, but 
destined to be rechanged again to-morrow. But if 

30 



76 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

this event be so stupendous ; if the impression that it 
leaves in heaven be so glorious, then we infer that if 
indeed born again, neither life nor death, nor angels, 
nor principalities, nor height, nor depth, nor any other 
creature shall be able to separate the subject of this 
mighty change from the love of God that is in Christ 
Jesus. I believe, that if one is born again now, it is 
just as certain that he will be blessed in heaven, as it 
is that he is born again on earth ; because whom God 
justifies, them he glorifies, and if he has made us sons, 
he makes us heirs, and if heirs, heirs of God, and joint 
heirs with Christ. But, you say, this will make such 
an one say, we may live in sin : what does it matter ? 
nothing can destroy me. You are here changing the 
persons. If an unconverted man take up such a con- 
viction, of course he will do so ; but I am speaking of 
a man changed ; and if changed, all things to him are 
become new T . He has new tastes, new laws, new mo- 
tives, new springs, a new master, new hopes. The 
man who is born again can no more delight in sin than 
the human body can delight in being pricked and stung 
and cut, and having all its nerves and sensibilities torn. 
It is not his nature, it is not his taste : the former 
things have passed away, and all things have become 
new. So this event, the birth of a soul, is no tem- 
porary change — it is a far greater event than the birth 
of the mightiest monarch, it is an event whose root 
may be on earth, but whose blossom is in the skies. 

Let us notice the interesting fact, that heaven and 
earth are thus united and tied together ; that there is 
a chord of sympathy between them. Every pulsation 
of a believer's heart has its rebound beside the throne 
of God. Light from the footstool is reflected at the 



JOY IN THE PRESENCE OF THE ANGELS 77 

throne. A believer persecuted on earth is felt by 
Jesus as if he himself were persecuted there. We are 
not orphans, we are not cast off and despised ones. 
God looks lovingly upon us : Christ came not to con- 
demn us, but that whosoever believeth on him might 
have everlasting life. And if, let me add, the joy re- 
sulting from the recovery of one lost soul is felt to be 
so intense, what will by the joy ! what the songs ! 
what the ecstacy ! when the whole earth shall be co- 
vered with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters 
cover the sea. From all this we learn that new duties 
devolve upon us. If a soul recovered unto God be 
the source of joy in heaven, to be the humble instru- 
ment of that recovery is to be covered with a portion 
of the glory of heaven — to share in the sympathies 
of angels — to be instrumental, in short, in doing the 
noblest thing that can be done below ; what angels re- 
joice in, we should willingly labour for ; what they 
feel so joyful though they have no share in it, we ought 
to feel to be the most important who have the greatest 
stake in it. The angels in heaven have none of that 
monopoly which cares for one's own things, however 
small, and cares little for other men's wellbeing, how- 
ever important. Whatever be the sphere in which we 
move, our neighbourhood, our parish, our country, the 
world, we have a mission. Let us live, not for being 
rich only, or great only, but for doing good. The 
noblest work is beneficence. Never does man become 
so like God as when he does the greatest good ; and 
never does the Christian act worthy of his calling till 
he feels that when he has done all he is able to do, he 
has done but nothing in comparison with what he 
should do. 
g2 



CHAPTER VI. 

"A certain man had two sons: and the younger of them said to his 
father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And 
he divided them his living. And not many days after, the younger 
son gathered all together, and took his journey into far a country, and 
there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had 
spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land ; and he began to 
be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that 
country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would 
fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat : and 
no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself, he said, How 
many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, 
and I perish with hunger ! I will arise and go to my father, and will 
say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, 
and am no more worthy to be called thy son : make me as one of thy 
hired servants." — Luke xt. 11-19. 

This is one of those beautiful passages of Scripture 
which it is impossible to adorn by any language of 
man : the fear that one feels is, lest the exposition of 
the commentary should detract from the force, the 
point and the beauty of the original: still it has 
deeper meaning in almost every clause that meets the 
eye, and it is the duty, as it must be the delight, of a 
faithful expositor, M far as the Spirit of God may 
enable him, to break the shell and bring forth the 
kernel, and so unfold the thoughts of mercy and of 
love that lie under the imagery here employ^. I 
need not remind the reader of the connection in which 
it stands : the objection of the Pharisees was, " this 
man receiveth sinners ;" the first reply of our Lord to 
78 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 79 

this objection was the shepherd leaving the ninety and 
nine sheep that were safe in the fold, and going after 
the lost sheep, and persevering in the pursuit till he 
find it ; and after finding it, laying it on his shoulder, 
and bringing it home rejoicing. The next answer he 
gave — and such harmonies between things spiritual 
and things physical, are not merely beautiful illus- 
trations, but conclusive arguments — was the woman 
who had lost one out of ten coins, lighting a candle, 
and searching for it until she finds it ; at which she 
bids her friends rejoice. At the end of each illus- 
tration, our Lord adds, there is joy in the presence of 
the angels — not over the ninety and nine that are in 
the fold — not over the nine coins, that are safe — but, 
over the lost one found. Instead of having the temper 
of the Pharisee, murmuring that such lost ones are 
found, and such hidden ones recovered, they rejoice : 
"there is joy in the presence of the angels over one 
sinner that rcpenteth." The next illustration, not 
more apposite, but more striking and instructive, is a 
man with two sons, one of whom remains at home, 
while the other leaves and plays the prodigal. It has 
been a dispute who this elder son was. I think that 
the only answer, is, that he was the same in this pa- 
rable that the ninety-nine sheep were in the first, and 
the nine safe coins in the second parable : and the 
reply that I gave then is the reply that I give now, 
whosoever the ninety and nine sheep be, it is plain we 
do not belong to them ; we are represented by the lost 
sheep : whoever the nine safe pieces of silver may be, 
it is plain we are not of them, we are seen in the lost 
coin ; and whosoever the elder brother may be, it 
seems equally plain he is not the type of us. The 

80* 



80 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

straying or prodigal son is the type and representative 
of all mankind. 

I will examine this illustrative parable, for the 
sake of convenience, under four great heads. First, 
man at home ; secondly, man in apostacy ; thirdly, 
man's conversion and return ; and fourthly, God's re- 
ception of him. 

Man at home, I need scarcely say, is man in a state 
of perfect innocence. Once he lived under the over- 
shadowing wings of God, holy and happy in the home 
that God made so beautiful and constituted so holy. 
Beauty without him, harmony within him, ministry 
around him, infinite and accumulating joys expanding 
before him in the future, constituted every inducement 
that a creature could have to retain his allegiance, and 
every dissuasive that Infinite Wisdom could apply to 
prevent his disloyalty. If a mere creature could stand, 
Adam would have stood; and the inference that many 
divines have drawn from this, is, that no creature can 
stand on a creature footing; and hence that it was not 
to repair an unfortunate occurence that Christ came 
into the world, but that the great end and aim of God 
from the depths of eternity past, was to send Christ, 
and to give angels and men their standing, their safety, 
and the continuance of their happiness from Christ. 
Whether this was his design from everlasting or not, 
it is the fact that the angels that are in glory, stand 
incapable of falling because Christ died, and-that the 
saints that shall be around the throne for ever and 
ever, shall serve and wait without end because Christ 
died. It is no less certain that not one of us can ever 
see heaven, or find out happiness, except by seeking 
life in the Saviour's grave, safety on the Saviour's 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 81 

cross, salvation in the Saviour's blood. But in man's 
first happy state, a seed of evil was deposited in his 
heart. Whence evil came, I cannot say; how it was per- 
mitted, or how to reconcile its existence with the holi- 
ness, the power, and the wisdom of God, I do not know. 
I do not believe God made sin. All things, it is said, 
were made by God ; but there is not a record in the 
Bible that God made sin ; whence came it ? If, rea- 
der, you are an unbeliever, I ask you to say vdience 
it came ? and you will find, if it puzzles and perplexes 
me, it will puzzle and perplex you just as thoroughly. 
It is not a difficulty peculiar to Christians, it is a dif- 
ficulty, all must admit, and none can explain. The 
origin of evil has tried the ingenuity of metaphysicians 
from the days of Cain downward to the last of the 
schoolmen, and no solution of it has been given. The 
best and only true exposition is this, " God made man 
upright but he hath sought out many inventions. " 

We have next to consider man's apostacy. He was 
at home in his Father's house. But that home did not 
satisfy him, and therefore the younger said to his fa- 
ther, "Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth 
to me." Every clause in this parable is singularly ex- 
pressive. We cannot but see that this demand was 
the first symptom of an alienated filial feeling ; for 
what does he say ? " Father, give me the portion of 
goods that falleth to my lot." One would have sup- 
posed he had been consultating with his solicitor, in 
order to be able to couch his demand in strictly tech- 
nical and legal phraseology, and thus approach his fa- 
ther, and ask for what was his right. He had evident- 
ly lost the aifection, and therefore he abandons the 
attitude of a son, and presents himself before his fa- 



82 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

ther as a suitor-at-law demanding his legal rights. 
Now, whenever a son bases his petition on the ground 
of law, and not on the ground of paternal love or filial 
gratitude, there is the evidence of the first wavering 
of the heart. The language of the son will always be, 
"Give us this day our daily bread." The language 
of the apostate will ever be, " Give me the portion of 
goods that falleth to me." The first asks a boon from 
mercy; the second demands from justice what he calls 
his right. This last is the predominating characteris- 
tic of the sinner. If there be one sound that rises 
from the fallen heart of human nature more loudly 
than another, it is "give me." This is the unceasing 
litany that is heard amid the shrines, the altars, and 
the temples of mammon ; it is the ground note of that 
song that ever swells to mammon's praise ; it is the 
inscription upon all his coffers — " give me." It is the 
cry of that selfish monopoly, that intense sympathy 
with self which thinks only of its own wants, however 
few, and cares nothing for the wants and necessities 
of others, however great and numerous — that selfish- 
ness which would trample down thousands in order to 
elevate itself upon their ruins. 

When the son urged his selfish demand, the father 
made no angry remark : but " divided unto them his 
living." It may be said he might have refused the 
abuse that immediately followed. I answer, it was 
better not. His son's heart was gone from home, why 
retain the body ? The heart is the man, the body is 
but the outward covering; and when the son showed 
by his demand that his heart was prodigal, it was a 
very insignificant thing that this body should be kept 
filial. The father therefore divided his living. When 



THE PKODIGAL SON. 83 

man fell, it was his heart that fell first from God : for 
he saw that the fruit was beautiful to the eye, and 
pleasant to the taste, and to be as gods was an ambi- 
tion worthy of his nature and desirable : and that 
when Adam's heart had apostatized from God, God 
would not keep Adam's person in Paradise, but drove 
out the man an exile upon the earth that his sin had 
polluted, to taste all its bitterness, and bear all its 
storms. "Not many days after," the son had thus 
got leave for his person to go after his heart, " he 
gathered all together, and took his journey into a far 
country." It would seem that between the apostacy 
of his heart and this personal and mechanical separa- 
tion from his father's house, there was an interval : 
that interval, I have no doubt, was one of fear, of 
struggle, and of perplexity : he thought of the love 
he owed his father, but felt stronger still the lusts 
that reigned within him : he thought of his duties to 
his parent, but he felt greater inclinations to sin : 
when once, however, the heart has apostatized, it is 
a mere question of time when the rest shall follow. 
Let the heart nestle in its home, and all will be 
safe ; but let the heart go astray, finding the ele- 
ments of its peace, its comfort, and its happiness 
elsewhere, and all is gone. The shell is left by the 
fire-side, but the son — the "Absolom, my son" — is 
elsewhere. 

Departure from home was the commencement of the 
younger son's apostasy ; departure from God is just 
the primary sin of man. The language used through- 
out the Bible to represent sin is apostacy. " My 
people have committed two evils ; they have forsaken 
me, the fountain of living waters," and they have 



84 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

"hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can 
hold no water/' When a son ceases to find his hap- 
piness at home, he finds it, or hopes to find, or tries to 
find it, elsewhere. When a sinner ceases to find his 
rest in God, he seeks and tries to find it elsewhere ; 
and when man forsakes the fountain of living waters, 
he goes and digs out broken cisterns that can hold no 
water. Having forsaken God, his true fountain, he 
engages in the drudgery of digging cisterns below, 
and while he feels all the drudgery, he experiences all 
the pangs of thorough disappointment. We have the 
very same sin expressed in that passage in Hebrews : 
"an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living 
God." Physically or mechanically, we cannot separate 
ourselves from God. Spiritually and morally, Ave do 
separate our hearts from God. I say no man can se- 
parate from God, physically and mechanically. The 
angel that soars in the heights and the reptile that 
creeps the lowest in the depths, are equally within the 
reach and under the inspection of God. " If we ascend 
into heaven, he is there ; if w T e descend into hell, he is 
there also : if we take the wings of the morning, and fly 
to the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall his 
hand lead us, and his right hand shall uphold us. If 
we say darkness shall cover us, even the night shall be 
light about us." And therefore, mechanically and phy- 
sically, it is impossible for the greatest apostate to 
get rid of the grasp of omnipotence, and the sight of 
the omniscience of God: but morally, spiritually, in 
heart, every one of us, by nature is an apostate: even 
when the outward aspect seems worship, the inward 
heart has all the feelings of enmity, and all the incli- 
nations of apostasy; the course of man, until changed 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 85 

by the Spirit of God, is one of constant retrogression 
from God; as he grows older, he docs not become more 
religious, but more inveterately attached to the plea- 
sures, the possessions, the joys, the " broken cisterns" 
of this present world ; every stage of his retrogression 
presenting a new spring of misery, till it reaches the 
very aphelion of his apostasy, by being plunged into 
that darkness which shall know no light, and drinking 
that cup of wo which is never emptied. And as man 
retreats further and further in this world from God, 
his imagination ceases to soar ; the imagery of heaven 
fades from his memory, the last struggling affection 
of his heart leaves go" its hold of God, his eye fails to 
to see, and his ear ceases to hear God anywhere. His 
pride hates God's sovereignty, his sin hates God's ho- 
liness, he expects to live by despising the one, and re- 
belling against and provoking the other. This is the 
consummation of man's apostasy; but not satisfied 
w T ith the sorrow and the bitterness of such apostasy as 
this, he further plunges into active evil ; he not only 
draws from God, but he draws nearer and nearer to 
every thing that is hateful and abominable in the 
sight of God. It is added, therefore, of the prodigal 
son, that " he wasted all in riotous living." When he 
set out he gathered all that his father gave unto him, 
which implies that he ha$ a considerable amount: but 
he had not long been absent from his father's house 
before his gathering came to be scattering, and all he 
had w T as utterly expended: no doubt he had much 
merriment in the mean time. There is a sort of joy 
and sensual excitement in sin : there is revelling and 
delight in the riot of human passions ; it is animal, still 
it is joy in its way ; but it has been found by all who 
H 



86 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

have imitated the prodigal's example, that the joy of 
a sinner is but like the crackling of burning thorns be- 
neath the pot; it is, in the language of the apostle, 
"the pleasure of sin that is but for a season." The 
passions soon cease to be sensitive ; the gilding wears 
off the toy ; the siren song comes to be hackneyed 
by repetition, and the last wreck of a sensual debauchee 
presents at length the most horrible spectacle that 
rational man can reach or Christian deplore. We too, 
my dear reader, have gathered all, and wasted all; 
for, as I have said, the prodigal son is the type of us : 
how many sermons have we heard, and dismissed from 
our minds? how many talents have we abused? how 
many mercies have we been unthankful for ? how 
much have we expended on the gratification of the lust 
of the eye and the pride of life ; how little have we 
laid out on ministry to our souls ? Persons who would 
not grudge to spend a thousand pounds in furnishing a 
drawing-room, would grudge to spend a few pounds in 
providing a commentary on the word of God, or a suit- 
able library to instruct them in the things that belong 
to their eternal peace ! 

When he had wasted his substance in riotous living, 
it is said, "he began to be in want*" A famine arose 
in the land, whose granaries he thought would be al- 
ways full, and he too felt it. This is true of a higher 
state. There is a famine that you have more or less 
felt, and which the apostate ever feels at every step of 
his departure from God, far more terrible than a 
famine of bread or of wa^er, — when the soul pines for 
a happiness it knows and yet tastes not — when it hun- 
gers for life and truth and joy — there is then a famine 
worthy of the terrible name ; and it is a famine that 






TIIK PRODIGAL SOX. 87 

appears at rich men's tables, and startles by its ap- 
pearance the gay and the giddiest circles of the great 
— a famine of the bread of life and the water of life. 
He is poor who is destitute of the unsearchable riches 
of Christ ; he is hungry indeed who has not the bread 
of life, and he is thirsty indeed who drinks from the 
broken cisterns of sin, and draws nothing from the 
fountain of living waters. The character of the great 
mass of mankind is " labouring for that which is not 
bread, and spending their money for that which satis- 
fieth not." 

But even this state of famine did not yet induce him 
to return to his father. True it is, the last help that 
man has recourse to is God : when he feels this famine, 
this want, this unhappiness, this inner spring of miser} 7- , 
— this root, — this prolific root of bitterness, — such is 
his enmity to God that he will try every expedient, 
manoeuvre, and resource, rather than arise at once and 
go to his God. 

When the prodigal began to be in want, " he joined 
himself (it is said) to a citizen of that country." Af- 
flictions vex unsanctified man ; but they do not change 
the heart ; the grace of God alone can do this ; he who 
fretted at the bondage of his home now becomes the 
slave of a swineherd. He who began by making all 
the things of the world minister to the gratification of 
his senses, now experiences the reverse, and all his 
senses and powers must minister to the bondage of the 
world. He not only lost his home, the joys of his 
home, and the sympathies of his brotherhood, but he 
missed the very things he sacrificed all for ; and so it 
will be still, " What shall it profit a man, if he gain the 

whole world and lose his own soul?" The one is a 

31 



88 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

peradventure, the other is a dead and absolute cer- 
tainty. Let us never forget that if we set out to gain 
the world, ours is but a chance, a peradventure if we 
succeed. For one that succeeds, who does not know 
that nine fail? But if you set out to seek the world, 
and let the world absorb your heart, and concentrate 
upon that world your best, your holiest affections, the 
certainty is that while you may lose the world you will 
lose your soul. Yet man, when he has lost God and 
begins to feel miserable, goes and joins himself to any 
thing and everything that will promise most loudly to 
remove his misery and restore his lost happiness. 
The prodigal joined himself to a citizen of the strange 
country; so does the natural man join himself to 
trade, devoting to it every energy, or to pleasure, or 
ambition, or political duties, or he joins himself to 
gayety, to brilliant circles, shining fetes, great parties, 
if peradventure amid the glare of the world's splen- 
dour he may extinguish every beam of that light that 
leads to solemn inquiry. He joins himself to the 
strange citizen of a strange country. Man without 
God does not cease to have a god. The prodigal had 
no sooner left his father than his growing sense of se- 
paration made him join himself to this citizen of a 
strange country. Man no sooner leaves God than he 
takes something else in his room. There is no such 
animal as an atheist ; even the brutes are not so : for 
in their ministry, and their instincts, they indicate a 
recognition of one superior to themselves. There are 
plenty of antitheists — men opposed to the true God — 
but there is no such thing as a man without a God : if 
they leave the true God, they take the strange god in 
his stead. Man's soul was made to be a temple, and 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 89 

when it is not the temple of the living God, it becomes 
the temple of an idol. Man's heart was made to be 
an altar, and incense will rise from it, either to Jehovah 
or to Jupiter; whosoever it be that draws forth your 
first morning and your last evening reflections ; what- 
ever it be to gain which you bend every energy, mould 
every influence, subordinate every thing you have — 
you may call it trade, or pleasure, or politics, or law, 
or physic, that is your god — that is the cistern out of 
which you are drinking — that is the being from whom 
you are seeking the safety of your souls, the happiness 
of a world to come. Are we living in or without the 
living God ? Are we still drinking at some strange cis- 
tern, and joined to some citizen of this world ? If any 
are so, and thus hoping for happiness as the prize, they 
ought to know they are not the first persons that have 
made the experiment ; they are the repeaters merely 
of an experiment that has been made ten thousand 
times, and ten thousand times has failed. I will give 
the result of the experiment as tried by one who had 
the greatest power of his age; great skill, great re- 
sources, and the fullest opportunities for the experi- 
ment that ever mortal had, and under the most favour- 
able circumstances. He thus describes the process : 
"I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine," 
— that was one of his experiments — " I sought to lay 
hold of folly" — balls, plays, &c. — "that I might see 
what was good for the sons of men that they should do 
under heaven all the days of their life. I made me 
great works" — when I had nothing to do but to pull 
down the old walls and build new ones — " Ibuilded me 
houses" — I thought that the cause of my disquiet was 

the smallness or the inconvenience of the rooms, the 
h2 



90 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

smokiness of the chimneys ; the want of colouring here, 
and gilding there : Oh, I thought, if I built a large 
and spacious house, I should be happy ; forgetting 
that it is not the house that makes the inhabitant 
happy, but the inhabitant that makes the house delight- 
ful ; and that changing the bed of a sick man is not 
to heal his disease : what we want is not change of 
circumstance around us, but a change of heart within us 
— " I planted me vineyards," in order to get the 
choicest wines, wines of the richest fragrance ; " I made 
me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees of all 
kinds of fruits : I made me pools of water," that there 
might be abundance of fish supplied to my table and 
of the choicest kind. " I got me servants and maidens, 
and had servants born in my house ; also I had great 
possessions of great and small cattle, above all that 
were in Jerusalem before me. I gathered me also 
silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings, 
and of the provinces," diamonds, gems, and all pre- 
cious things; and in order still more to increase my 
happiness, « I gat me men singers and women singers" 
— the very choicest imports from abroad ; taking care 
that they should have special pay and patronage in 
order to be the first of their profession; — " and the 
delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, 
and that of all sorts. So I was great, and increased 
above all that were in Jerusalem before me ; also my 
wisdom" — intellectual wisdom— "remained with me." 
I was a botanist, mineralogist/ an astronomer; I 
studied the harmonies and relationships of all things ; 
and, in short, to crown the experiment, there was not 
an element that might contribute to my happiness 
wanting ; " I withheld not my heart from any joy :" 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 91 

I did not stop because God's commandment said thou 
shalt not do it ; I flung all fear away, in order that I 
might make the experiment fully and freely ; " and 
my heart rejoiced in all my labours ; this was my por- 
tion of all my labour." I resolved to look on this mag- 
nificent pile of splendour and glory as my source of 
inexhaustible happiness ; I looked on all the works 
that my hands had wrought; and behold," — I was a 
happy man ? — " behold all was vanity and vexation of 
spirit." 

Now, can we have better opportunities than Solomon 
had, or is the experiment more likely to succeed in the 
nineteenth century than so many hundred years before 
the birth of Christ? Others also have tried it. Lord 
Chesterfield, celebrated for his courtesy, both in pre- 
cept and practice, and for his acquaintance with all 
the elegancies of a courtly, and all the accomplish- 
ments of a social life, said, " I am now at the age of 
sixty years : I have been as wicked as Solomon ;" — it 
is a great deal to admit that ; but he adds in conclu- 
sion, " I have not been so wise : but this I know, I am 
wise enough to test the truth of his reflection, that all 
is vanity and vexation of spirit." A great poet has 
given a similar testimony; a poet who had rank, title, 
genius, wealth, every thing, in short, that man could 
have which this world could supply, and the last lines 
he wrote were — 



" My days are in the yellow leaf, 
The flower, the fruit of life is gone ; 
The worm, the canker, and the grief 
Are mine alone." 

Such is the testimony of Lord Byron. If I refer to 

31* 



92 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

ancient times, and take Solomon, or to modern times, 
and appeal to the case of a distinguished nobleman, or 
if I come to still more recent times, and take a distin- 
guished poet, noble, rich, and accomplished, I find they 
all solemnly declare, that whatever be the name of the 
strange citizen to whom they have hired themselves, 
his service is vanity and vexation of spirit. 

What did this strange master do for the prodigal ? 
No doubt the prodigal thought he would be treated by 
him much better than by his father. Many young sons 
believe that they have the worst treatment at home, 
and if they could get into some other home they should 
be much happier. They are utterly mistaken ; they 
see the gilding only of the stranger's home : they do 
not see the corroding care that cleaves to its hearth, 
and creeps through every nook of it, only hidden by 
gay drapery. The prodigal, then, having left his 
father, tries to find another who would suit him better, 
and he hired himself unto this strange citizen, as Solo- 
mon did, as Lord Chesterfield did, as Lord Byron did. 
And how did he treat him ? Hear w T hat he did, and 
what the world will do with you, and what sin has ever 
done with his servants — he sent him to herd swine. 
This is most expressive. To a Jew, no employment 
was more offensive and disgusting; therefore our Lord, 
by using this expression, teaches us that the service of 
sin is the most loathsome, degrading, and hateful thing; 
and how great the contrast ! — the contrast between the 
angels singing around the throne, amid the splendours 
of the beatific vision, and a man herding swine, the 
slave of the hard-hearted swine-keeper. Yet such is 
the contrast between Adam in Paradise, the companion 
of the Most High, and Adam in the experiment of So- 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 93 

lomon, in the life of Lord Chesterfield, and in the 
wretchedness of Lord Byron. And we read that when 
thus employed, he found it not only degrading and dis- 
gusting labour, but missed in it even a supply to his 
physical necessities. One can put up with a very dis- 
agreeable trade, if it brings considerable emolument ; 
but the prodigal found not only a disagreeable trade, 
but he found he had no emolument at all. " He was 
fain to fill his belly with the husks that the swine did 
eat." " Husk" is not a happy word; the word is in 
the original »ep*re©*, which means "little horn ;" it 
is known to be the fruit of the carob-tree ; it is like a 
bean-pod, and shaped very like a little horn ; it was 
never used as food for man, but usually given to cattle 
and to swine. It is said, he was "fain" to fill his belly 
with the husks that tire swine did eat. So little con- 
fidence had his master in him, that he watched him, 
lest he should share the food of the very swine he fed. 
He tried to satisfy the hunger of man with the food of 
beasts; but the language of the text implies that it 
served only to deaden the aching agony of hunger, not 
to satisfy it ; teaching us that when man tries to fill his 
immortal soul with the things of sense, that are fit only 
for swine, he fails ; he blunts the sensibility of his lof- 
tier nature, but he does not satisfy its cravings. What 
are all the efforts of men who are without God, who 
have no real religion within them? They are efforts 
that may have inscribed upon them all — immortal man 
trying to satisfy his soul with the husks of swine. 
What were all the efforts of Greece in the day of its 
noblest grandeur ? What were all the attempts of 
Rome, in its feasts, its banquets, its festivals, but hu- 



94 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

manity in its last phasis, and just previous to the Sa- 
viour's Advent, trying to fill its soul with the husks 
that swine did eat ? But these failed to satisfy. 

The last feature is still more expressive; its meaning 
is implied rather than stated. "When he came to 
himself." He was in a state, practically and substan- 
tially, of lunacy, of mania, of moral derangement. 
And what is the character of man still ? The man who 
is the most sensible, the most clever, the most sagacious 
in the things of time, shows he is a fool and a maniac in 
the things of eternity. If you see a man insensible to 
the clearest evidence — evidence that satisfies every one 
around him, you are driven to suppose that his mind 
is not right. Or if you see a man who is anxious 
about the minutest trifle, but indifferent to the most 
momentous realities — if you saw a mother amid the 
blazing rafters of her house trying to save the cradle, 
and careless of the safety of the babe, you would con- 
clude that that mother was a maniac : or if you saw a 
person standing on the brink of a volcano, or amid the 
vibrations of an earthquake, careful only to pick up 
pebbles, and careless of personal safety — or standing 
on the deck of a ship that was sinking inch by inch 
into the gulf, counting and calculating how many were 
likely to be lost, and how many would probably be saved 
— would you not pronounce such persons to be mad- 
men, or at least to be destitute of all that constitutes 
the characteristic sagacity of their race ? Or if you 
see a person mis-estimating every thing around him, 
thinking that a shieling is a palace, that rags are royal 
purple, would you not conclude that he is a maniac? 
And if we see men calling dross riches, folly wisdom, 



THE PRODIGAL SON. 95 

time eternity ; careful for the body as if that wore to 
live for ever ; careless of the soul as if it were to die 
to-morrow ; calling the law hardship, the cross folly ; 
the gospel unworthy of our best, our deepest, our most 
solemn consideration — we have all the insanity of the 
maniac, but there is not his irresponsibility too, — the 
maniac is not responsible for what he does ; the ruins 
in which he lies are not of his own doing : but the sin 
that weighs the unbeliever down to destruction is a 
load he is deliberately and wilfully piling up. 

I have thus attempted to depict man in his apostasy. 
Reader, is this your state at this moment — apostasy 
from God ? My dear brother, who is your master ? 
who is it that occupies the largest nook in thy heart ? 
what is the topic that gathers around it your intensest 
sympathies, thoughts, affections, fears ? What is it 
that absorbs you the most? We live at a crisis big 
with terrible results ; not even the most sagacious 
statesman knowing what to-morrow may bring forth ; 
kings tumbling from their thrones, and popes tumbling 
after them ; the whole world agitated and convulsed, 
and God sparing this isle from the storm, reserving it, 
like a beautiful gem in the bosom of the deep that 
girdles it : why does he spare it thus ? I believe this 
respite is like the peace that was given to the Chris- 
tians at the downfall of Jerusalem, that they might 
escape from its ruins, and find a refuge in the neigh- 
bouring city of Pella. That peace is ours at this 
moment ; and I believe that they that do not avail 
themselves of it, to make their peace with God, will 
meet judgment without mercy when the storm comes. 
Jerusalem neglected its opportunity, and our Lord 



96 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

said to it, what it disregarded then, but what it felt in 
all its bitterness when it was too late : " Jerusalem, 
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest 
them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have 
gathered thee as a hen gathereth her brood under her 
wings, and ye would not." 



CHAPTER VII. 

%\t Contesiou. 

"And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my 
father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger. I 
will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have 
sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be 
called thy son : make me as one of thy hired servants." — Luke xv. 
17-19. 

We have seen the sinner's apostasy, let us now con- 
sider his conversion. 

The first symptom of conversion is : " He came to 
himself." Every clause in this parable is full of impor- 
tant meaning; it alone is evidence that the Bible is in- 
spired. There is a depth, a comprehensiveness of mean- 
ing in every touch of this exquisite painting that proves 
to me that the painter is God, and all the colours taken 
from heaven. How expressive is this one touch — man 
never comes to himself until he comes to God. We may 
talk as we like about the dignity of man, the greatness 
of man, the glory of man, the perfectibility of the human 
race : but this is truth, notwithstanding, that till man 
come to God, he cannot come to himself, he cannot 
develop his best energies. He has lost his dignity, 
his glory, his happiness, his soul, his self, and he can 
find his dignity, his happiness, his glory, his self, only 
in God. We say of a man who is intoxicated, he is 
not himself; or of a man who is deranged, he is not 
himself. It is so with the sinner, he is not himself; 
I 97 



98 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNKHS. 

he is not what he was made, he is not what he is meant 
to be, nor what grace can make him. He has to come 
first to God, and then he will come to himself. Man 
fallen, is below his proper standard : man recovered is 
only at his proper standard. Man had all in Paradise 
— he lost all by sin : but man shall regain all in Para- 
dise regained, having come first to God, and having 
found next himself. The expression " come to him- 
self," too, as I have already shown, may denote that 
man as a sinner is deranged. The Scripture uses the 
expression "fool" to describe the wicked. And sure- 
ly, that man shows himself to be a fool who thinks 
only of things that perish like snow-flakes in his hand 
while he touches them, but nothing of great and en- 
during realities with which he must come very soon 
into contact. Surely that man cannot be wise who 
thinks only of the outer case, and nothing of the inner. 
Does not that man present all the symptoms of derange- 
ment who thinks and acts as if God would make his 
enemies happy, and his people only miserable ? On 
the other hand, — call him fanatic, enthusiast, or what 
you please, — that man has a mind full of soberness 
and truth, and is emphatically wise, whose religion 
leads him to count all but loss for the excellency of 
the knowledge of Christ Jesus ; whose order of proce- 
dure is to seek first the kingdom of God and his right- 
eousness, and whose deliberate and solemn conviction 
is, " what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole 
world and lose his own soul ?" If there be no soul, 
' if that soul be in no peril, if there be no righteous re- 
tribution, if there be no judgment-seat, no heaven, no 
hell, then say so, — manfully say so. I like to hear 
one carry out his conviction ; and if this be your con- 



THE CONVERSION. 99 

viction, manfully say so ; fling the Bible from you, do 
not show yourself again in a church pew, treat the 
Sabbath-day as other days, do not compromise, do not 
be half and half; carry out your conviction to the ut- 
most possible extent. You know very well you dare 
not do so. Instincts that were implanted in Paradise, 
and yet not uprooted, rise and protest against such 
conduct as folly, depravity, and crime. But it is said, 
"when he came to himself," he began to think and re- 
flect ; and think and reflect right well, for the very 
first thought that struck him was a contrast : " How 
many hired servants of my father's have bread enough 
and to spare, and I perish with hunger." I have no 
doubt that he not only exercised a retrospect, but also, 
if I may use the word, circumspect. He saw the very 
swine feeding on the husk with satisfaction, and the 
whole face of the created world wearing a calm, which 
seemed to show that all things around gravitated each 
to its centre, and felt rest each in fulfilling its mission ; 
while he alone was full of remorse, dissatisfaction, 
restlessness, and agony. Still I believe that a walk in 
a beautiful country, amid delightful scenes, is fitted to 
have the same sanctifying effect. The contrast be- 
tween the sweet calm in which nature seems, to repose, 
and the troubled spirit that is w T ithin a guilty sinner's 
heart, is fitted to suggest the question, why is it so ? 
why this contrast ? something must be WTong in the 
one that is not so in the other. But he not only looked 
around him, but he made a retrospect. He said, in 
my father's house, I have no doubt there is bread for 
servants, will there not be a morsel for a son ? there is 
bread even for hired servants who have no affection 

for my father: surely, there will be a little still left for 

32 



100 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

one who is indeed a prodigal, but still a son ; if there 
be bread for many servants, surely there will be a 
little left for one, and that one a son. Is not this just 
an instance of some of those recollections that rise 
within us, bringing vividly before our minds our 
primeval happiness, as if some unspent sounds of 
heaven's harmony reached the solitary cells of the soul 
within us. Like the rose that Eve is said to have car- 
ried forth from Paradise on the day of her expulsion, 
and that withered in her hand, but still reminded her 
of Eden, we have some sere and faded blossoms 
gathered originally in purer scenes, and still fragrant 
with a portion of their original perfume, and wearing 
a few of their first tints. It seems as if some flashes 
of heaven's sunshine, like summer lightning among the 
clouds, spread over our world to remind us by con- 
trast of the blessedness we criminally lost, and of the 
glory, which, by grace, we may yet gain. So the pro- 
digal contrasted what he was in his father's house, and 
what he felt, with what all nature seemed to express 
around him. What brought these things to his recol- 
lection ? Affliction. None of us like affliction; no 
one likes to be laid on a sick bed ; no one likes to 
have all he accumulated by industry, in order to make 
his latter journey to the grave more soft, swept away at 
once. Yet such strokes are not random things. There 
is a " need be;" " if need be that ye are in manifold 
afflictions;" and we find in every case in the Bible 
that the affliction that was the most severe, was, in the 
case of nine out of ten of the most distinguished 
saints, the very affliction that was most blessed. Like 
the moistened clay that was applied to the eyes of the 
blind, the affliction enabled the prodigal to see sights, 



THE CONVERSION. 101 

and visions, and prospects, he had not seen before. 
These afflictions brought him from the strange land 
and its citizens to his father's home, so that he could 
say with David, " It is good for me that I have been 
afflicted." 

Let us notice the resolution he came to after he 
made this contrast. First, he came to himself: se- 
condly, he reasoned, reflected, and contrasted : and 
thirdly, he made up his mind to this resolution — "I 
will arise and go to my father." Many are always on 
the eve of making this resolution, and not a few r come 
to the very point, and form the resolution, "I will arise 
and go;" but here they stop short; they go not to 
their father, but to "another citizen," to see if change 
of masters will create a change of feeling, if perad- 
venture the joy that they missed in the one bondage, 
be thus realized in the other. They change their 
country, and calculate they shall thereby change their 
mind ; really they abandon the service of one lust and 
engage in the service of another. They get tired of 
the Drama, and determine to take a turn at the Opera. 
They leave Drury Lane, w T hich has failed to satisfy 
them, and go to Covent Garden, where they hope to 
succeed better. They give up alcohol and take opium, 
or they give up both and take tobacco ; or they give up 
all three, and join the Temperance Society. It is still the 
sick person changing the side, altering the prescription, 
but ever failing, because the secret of the misery is in 
the heart's core within. They get tired of one minister, 
and they go to hear another, and lay the blame upon 
the poor preacher, forgetting that the w T hole blame is 
within ; or they give up one creed, and subscribe to 
another, or abandon one ceremony and adopt another. 
i2 



102 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

They "box the compass" of the world, seeking new 
masters in this strange country in which their own 
sins have placed them, but they are still bitterly dis- 
appointed, for they feel that there is no rest nor re- 
pose ; nor will they reach any till they rise and go, 
not to another master, but to their father, "I will arise 
and go to my father." 

There is another class, however, who do not go so 
far as this. The lowest and the worst of all think that 
they cannot be better ; that they are best as they are, 
and that it is impossible to be better here, and that 
God made and meant them to be so, and that men and 
swine, i. e. God's rational offspring and the brute 
animals, were created to feed equally upon husks. 
This is Owenism and Fourierism; whose disciples 
hold that the husks of swine are fit for our food ; that 
the food of man and the food of swine are one, and 
that' the whole difference is merely in the dressing; 
hence the sarcastic remark, "that cookery alone dis- 
tinguishes man from the lower animals." This is par- 
ticularly the creed of Socialism. They say man has 
nothing in him nobler and better than the beasts that 
perish ; and that the same food was meant for both, 
the same home, the difference between the pigsty and 
the home being merely a difference in mechanical de- 
tails, and in little arrangements ; but practically and 
substantially both having lived alike are alike, and fall 
into the common gulf — annihilation ; but we would not 
believe them ; these creeds revolt the best instincts 
even of our fallen humanity. We will not believe 
that man's soul dies like the brutes, and that this 
creation is without a creator, and that this family 
is without a father, and that these hopes — these 



THE CONVERSION. 103 

indomitable hopes — which have survived all opposi- 
tions, and withstood all shocks, — the hopes of immor- 
tality, — are planted here only to baulk the miserable 
subject of them when he expects to find them realized. 
There are others, however, who adopt another course ; 
they determine to reach by force or by fraud what 
they will not or cannot reach otherwise. One of these 
says, I am in a wretched state, I am starving : I am 
here feeding on the husks of swine: "I will arise," 
and steal — forgetting God's great prohibition, and 
thinking by plundering a neighbour to enrich himself. 
Never yet did any man become rich by dishonesty. 
To try to enrich oneself by dishonesty is not only the 
way to become poorer, but it is also the way to become 
miserable. Many a man has tried the experiment ; he 
has run the round of the theatres, of dissipation, and 
folly, gratifying every lust, ministering to every pas- 
sion ; and when he could get no more fuel for his pas- 
sions, he has then laid his hand on that which is not 
his own, and has become a wreck here, and possibly a 
wreck for ever. Others again determine on revolution ; 
they say we have nothing to lose, and a chance of 
gain in a change, let us join in upsetting things that 
are. I suspect that there is more of this at the bottom 
of every revolution in the world than what is called 
political feeling. Others again are so disappointed, 
so grieved, so vexed, that their reason becomes im- 
paired ; the powers of the mind paralyzed, and they 
commit suicide, and yet the wonder is that this does 
not oftener occur. I do not think that suicide is ever 
perpetrated when a person is in his right mind. The 
first law of nature is self-preservation ; and whenever 
that law is violated, it always seems to me clear that 

32* 



104 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

the mind is unhinged, and hence I believe that no one 
ever put an end to his own life unless he was insane. 
But while such insanity has not responsibility itself, yet 
the previous habits that induced the insanity ma^ be 
fraught with responsibility in the sight of God. There is 
no rest for the soul anymore than for the dove that left 
the ark, till it returns to God. The soul has feelings 
in it that earth cannot meet : and yet, as long as it is 
unsanctified, it has lusts within it which it will not 
cease to gratify. Your corruptions, supposing that 
you are unsanctified and unrenewed in the strange 
land, tie you to the earth, your better instincts within 
you lift you to the skies. You will not trust your in- 
fidelity lest it should fail you; you will not accept 
Christianity lest it should disturb you; you have 
neither the world's false peace, nor the peace of God 
which passeth understanding. Hence the most mi- 
serable beings are those who have light enough to see 
their duty, but lusts enough to neglect and despise it; 
who have conscience enough to tell them what they 
ought to be, but passions strong enough to make them 
what they should not be. They have all the disquiet 
that man can possibly have below, and they have no hope 
of any thing better or brighter beyond. But I dare say 
that when the prodigal came to that point, " I will arise 
and go to my father," it was not without a struggle, nor 
without opposition that he even formed and executed 
that resolution. Suppose that you have got over all the 
other misapprehensions and misconceptions that I have 
specified, and that you are resolved that the food of 
swine and the food of man are not the same, that liv- 
ing bread is for the soul of the one, and the husks that 
perish for the other : and suppose that you have re- 



THE CONVERSION 105 

solved not to change masters, in the vain and delusive 
notion that a change of masters will make a change 
in the servant's heart, and that you have determined 
not to steal, nor to become a revolutionist, nor a sui- 
cide, but as there is only one course, the course of 
peace, safety, and everlasting happiness, you have at 
last resolved, "I will arise and go to my father," you 
will find that numbers of difficulties and obstructions 
will suggest themselves to you; Satan, ever busy and 
watchful, who never puts forth so great ferocity as 
when a poor sinner is just escaping, like the fabled 
hero of old, from subterranean darkness into the glo- 
rious light, will suggest to you a thousand difficulties 
and obstructions ; he will perhaps whisper that you 
had better go to the head servant, or to the stew r ard, 
who will break the matter to your father, and you may 
thus obtain reconciliation without the humiliation of 
going into your father's presence. But you must see 
that if the servant be faithful, he will be too identified 
with his master to have any communication with his 
disobedient son without his master's cognizance : and 
if he be a bad one, he will like too well his place, and 
his pay, to do what would endanger either. 

The prodigal must have also thought, if such objec- 
tion occurred to him, I know not who is the steward 
now ; I have been many years absent ; I do not know 
whether he is cross or kind, whether he would repel 
my proposal, or instantly accept it ; I will not try this 
experiment ; I will, therefore, throw myself upon my 
father. But this suggestion might still occur, had I 
not better write to him? It is much easier to write to 
a person with whom we have a difference than to go 
at once to him and boldly tell him that difference. 



106 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

But then he thought, I am in a strange land, perhaps 
there is no post ; I cannot get food to eat, much less 
paper to write upon, or money with which to pay the 
postage ; therefore to write is utterly impossible, even 
if I were disposed. Were I to ask my father for 
money to buy clothes and food, he would not trust me ; 
he has heard and seen nothing but evil concerning me, 
and he could hope for no good by adding to means 
that might be turned to yet more extensive evil. He 
would say, how can I appear before my father ? I am 
in rags, and barefoot : shall I get some one to go and 
beg for a suit ? but no one will give me bread ; who 
will give me clothing ? My father would not trust me 
with money to buy raiment, for when he trusted me 
with half his goods, I spent it in all sorts of riotous 
living : and thus, if I go at all, I must go as I am ; 
and therefore, "I will arise and go to my father. " 
But it will be suggested to him, many of your old 
friends and companions will see you, and will say as 
you pass, " there goes a specimen of the fall of pride: 
that faded finery reminds us of one who set out in 
splendour, with contempt for all his companions who 
were so far behind him in this world's prosperity, and 
this you see is the issue of it." Well, let it be so ; I 
have determined to carry into practice the resolution I 
have formed ; "I will arise and go to my father.' ' If 
there be one reader of this work who has made up his 
mind to leave the sins of the world and embrace the 
Saviour ; to leave the strange land in which his heart 
has become an icicle, and all his feelings deadened, and 
to arise and go home and seek his father ; as sure as 
he makes the attempt, ten thousand difficulties will 
stare him in the face. When the woman sought to 



THE CONVERSION. JQ7 

touch the Saviour's garment, there was such a crowd 
that she could not get there ; the same crowd thrusts 
itself between the Saviour and the sinner still. And 
as sure as you determine, in the simplicity and ho- 
nesty of your convictions, to arise from this land of 
bondage, of misery, and of restlessness, and to seek 
peace in God your Father ; ancient creeds and modern 
confessions, and systems of theology, and Arminianism 
and Calvinism, and a thousand other "isms," will all 
start up and argue against your approach to your Fa- 
ther. Your commission is to tread them down as infa- 
mous intruders ; there is nothing between you and 
God in Christ. The greatest sinner is commanded to 
arise, and as soon as he arises, and seeks the God who is 
his Father in and by Christ Jesus, he will find a recon- 
ciled Father, and he will feel as a rejoicing son : there is 
nothing to be done — and this is the point I wish you es- 
pecially to notice — there is no penance to be performed. 
You are now called upon to arise and go to your 
Father. There is no penance to be endured, no pro- 
pitiation to be made, no preparation to go through, no 
new suit to get, no new shoes to put on, nothing to do 
but to come just as you are and go to your Father. 
There is no spot in which sin has left you where your 
Father is not ready to receive you ; there is no time 
exclusively canonical ; at midnight, at noon, at evening 
or at morn, God waits, and you have but to arise and 
go to your Father. There is no price that you have 
to pay, no holy water to be sprinkled with, nothing to 
do, nothing to prepare, nothing to suffer, but to arise 
and go to your Father. And there is no language 
that is specially holy ; speak to him in Latin, in Greek, 
in English, or in Afghan, if it be the language of the 



108 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

agitated, the awakened, the trusting heart, God hears 
and understands, and will welcome you, as a son com- 
ing home to his father. 

What an awful responsibility is placed upon every 
man that reads or hears this, that between the great- 
est sinner and the sin-forgiving God, there is nothing 
but that sinner's reluctance to arise and go to his Fa- 
ther ! Herein is the very essence of Protestant Chris- 
tianity. The distinction between true, scriptural, Pro- 
testant Christianity, and all other systems, is very 
short : the whole difference is in a nutshell ; every other 
system puts something between the sinner and God in 
Christ : the priest, or the sacrament, or absolution, or 
the ceremony, or penance, or the Church, or the Pope, 
something or other between the sinner and God; now 
what Martin Luther was enabled of God to do, and 
what the Bible so. distinctly justifies his doing, was his 
sweeping away every thing between the believing sinner 
and God's instant forgiveness, and teaching that sinner 
to arise just where he is, and as he is, and go to *his 
Father, and have instant peace with God through Jesus 
Christ. 

There is no spot, no time in which and at which 
you may not arise and go to your Father. And when 
the prodigal did so, he resolved to offer no palliation, 
or excuse. When a sinner's heart is not completely 
broken, he has a great number of ingenious excuses 
and palliations. One says — " True, it was very bad, 
but then it was the force of circumstances:" "true, it 
was very sinful, but then it w T as my own constitution :" 
" true, nothing can justify it, but it was rather my 
misfortune than my blame; the suggestion of others, 
the force of passion, bad examples." Here is the 



THE CONVERSION. 109 

true succession of human nature. Just as sure as 
Adam, when he was spoken to, threw the blame upon 
poor Eve, and took none to himself; and when Eve 
was spoken to, she threw the blame upon the serpent, 
and took none to herself, so man still puts the blame 
upon any thing and every thing but himself. But the 
prodigal, aided by the Spirit of God, overcame this, 
and said, " I will arise and go to my father, and will 
say unto him, Father, I have sinned ngainst heaven 
and before thee, und am no more worthy to be called 
thy son." I am wholly and solely to blame, and there 
is no blame anywhere but in my own heart in the 
sight of God. Notice how strong the language is : 
" against heaven and in thy sight." The greatest 
evidence of genuine repentance is, when one feels sin 
as committed in the sight .of God. Here I must make 
a remark of the greatest importance. When we sin, 
we wrong our neighbour, but we only sin, strictly 
speaking, against God. Hence David's language, in 
Psalm li., " Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, 
and done this evil in thy sight," is erroneously con- 
strued by those who say that this means comparatively 
or against thee chiefly. But I think the words are 
strictly and literally true. Sin can be* committed 
against God only. Hence my neighbour may forgive 
me the wrong I have done him, but God alone can 
forgive the sin. Thus, therefore, the idea of a priest 
forgiving sin would suppose that that priest was God. 
And if the pries't be God, or in the room of God, we 
can understand how he can forgive sin ; but if he only 
" sits in the temple of God, showing himself as if he 
were God," then his pretension to forgive sins is emi- 
nently unscriptural, yea, truly blasphemous. 
K 



HO CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

The prodigal son recollected the inextinguishable 
relationship — "I will arise and go to my father." 
That word "my" was the monosyllable that made the 
mighty difference ; wicked as I have been, he is still 
my father, and I am still Ms son. So God is repre- 
sented in the Bible; for it is, "Not to the Lord a 
God," but "to the Lord our God, belong mercies and 
forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against him." 
We are invited in the gospel to arise and go to God ; 
and not as to a severe judge, but as to a waiting and 
fond father ; a father in Christ, reconciling the world 
to himself; having no pleasure in the sinner's death, 
but rejoicing in his instant acceptance. And "I will 
go to my father, and will acknowledge, I am no more 
worthy to be called thy son;" here is not only full 
confession, deep sense of sin, but strong humility. I 
am not worthy of the name of son ; make me a ser- 
vant ; only place me in the sunshine of my father's 
countenance, I care not how lowly the place, how 
humble the service, if near to my father. Such is 
a sinner's desire to be reconciled to God and find 
peace in him, to realize in him his Father, that he will 
take any place at his footstool, or any seat beside his 
throne, if he can only glow in the light and breathe in 
the love of his Father. 

Such, then, is the conversion of the prodigal. We 
trace this conversion, unquestionably, to many circum- 
stances. He had been guilty of the basest ingrati- 
tude, the greatest impatience of domestic restraint, 
wasted his substance in riotous living, and he soon felt 
the wretchedness of the country to which he had exiled 
himself, the unsatisfactoriness of the only food that 
he could eat — affliction, remorse, comparison, retro- 



THE CONVERSION. HI 

spect, recollection, conscience, were no doubt blessed 
to awaken him, but there was a higher power than all 
— it is written, " No man can come to me," that is, 
arise and go to his father, "except the Father which 
hath sent me draw him." In other words, our ruin is 
so deep that it needs an infinitely wise God to convince 
us of it, — our sin is so great that it needs God himself 
to convince us that it can be forgiven, — our reluctance 
to go to him is so strong that it needs omnipotent 
power to draw us before we shall draw near to God ; 
in short, it is part of the penitent's first prayer, and 
of the glorified saint's first hymn, " not by might, nor 
by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." 
But lean upon that Spirit, pray for that Spirit's 
strength, and thus leaning, and thus praying, arise 
and go to your Father, and you will find him, as the 
prodigal found his father, ready and rejoicing to wel- 
come you. 



33 



CHAPTER VIII. 

"And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great 
way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on 
his neck, and kissed him." — Luke xv. 20. 

We saw, in the course of our last remarks upon 
this passage, how grace that prompted the resolution, 
"I will arise and go to my father," ended in the per- 
formance, "he arose and v/ent to his father." The 
least particle of grace in the heart of a prodigal son 
will not be extinguished until it end in glory, and 
present him a beloved son to his reconciled and loving 
Father. The resolutions of nature are repeatedly 
formed and repeatedly broken. The resolutions im- 
planted by grace prove like the morning light, that 
shineth more and more unto the perfect day. The 
man who has in his heart the least> particle of grace, 
has, in the felt presence of that particle, the sure 
earnest of a crown of glory. He that planted it will 
perfect it ; its author is its finisher ; the beginner of 
the good work will complete it to the end. 

When he arose and came to his father, and "Avhen 
he was yet a great way off, his father saw him." How 
can the father have happened to see his son "a great 
way off?" How did he know what hour, what day, or 
by what road he would come ? The only answer pos- 
sible is, that the father was seated, with all a father's 
112 



THE RECEPTION. 113 

recollections and sympathies, upon the roof of his east- 
ern house ; a flat roof on which, in eastern countries, 
they are wont to enjoy the air and view the surrounding 
scenery, under a sky, the reverse of ours, where mist 
would be the strange thing, and brilliant sunshine is 
the every-day thing. One day, no doubt, the father 
seated on his watch, loooking around him if he might 
catch a gleam of the approach of him who was still 
nearest and dearest to his heart, saw a mere speck in 
the distant horizon. He had no suspicion that it could 
be his son, but he watched the speck that grew into a 
shadow, and the shape of a human being ; and as he 
gazed upon it longer with trembling fears, and inter- 
mingling hopes, and doubts, and suspicions, all awa- 
kened, he saw something in the gait, in the movement, 
in the size of one approaching him, that convinced him 
it might be his returning prodigal son : and w T ho does 
not know that the eye of love needs no telescope to 
see its object ; the eye of affection has its focus ex- 
tended by the feeling that flows through it. A father's 
eye could recognise his son, when rags were his only 
covering : he looked again, and at last suspicion grew 
into conviction, and conviction into absolute certainty, 
this is none other than my returning prodigal, he that 
was lost, he that was dead. Now the moment that the 
father's conviction grew into certainty, what did he do? 
The "father of Christendom/' as he is called, was once 
placed in a somewhat analogous situation, in the per- 
son of the most celebrated pope of the celebrated suc- 
cession, Pope Gregory VII., known generally by the 
name of Hildebrand. This was not a poor prodigal 
son, but an emperor, the Emperor Henry, who had 
offended that father, and he w T as called upon, and con- 
K2 



114 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

sented to make reconciliation with him : the emperor 
came, but how did the "father of Christendom" receive 
him ? He shut the gates of his palace, commanded 
the emperor to do penance in the trenches amid snow 
during three winter nights, and then to come with his 
crown in his hand, and to receive that crown from the 
hands of the pontiff, and thus be reconciled. Such is 
Popish Christianity ; but it is not Bible Christianity : 
there are those still who have all the feelings of Hilde- 
brand, but not the full scope, thanks be to God for 
things as they are, for their development. The father, 
had he been a priest, would have prescribed to the pro- 
digal a course of penance and preparation for three 
days or three weeks, and then he would have treated 
with him ; but this was not the case here. The father 
neither closed the gates nor bolted the door, nor pre- 
scribed a penance, nor gave instructions to the servants, 
nor dealt with him through a third party ; but true to 
nature, which, even in its ruin, is nobler than Roman- 
ism, his heart throbbed with compassion, or, in the 
simple language of the text, " he had compassion on 
him" who had no compassion on himself: he ran, in con- 
trast to the son, who came creeping, cringing, doubting, 
and fell upon the neck of his son, and kissed him, and 
without one word of painful reflection, bade him come 
and eat of the fatted calf, that the whole house might 
instantly make merry. Sinner, this is just thy God ; 
this is the type, the model, only with the alloy of hu- 
man imperfection, to represent what God is to us. God 
waits for thee, thou needest not wait for him; Omnipo- 
tence is ready to save thee ; but it Avill not save thee 
against thy will : the sinner is made willing ; he never 
is made a saint in spite of that will. He asks from 



THE RECEPTION. U5 

heaven, why will ye die ? and he commissions every 
minister of the gospel to say, " Him that cometh unto 
me" — him, mark that word — it is not the very good 
man, the respectable man, but it is "him" — be his 
sins of the deepest die, and the time during which he 
has committed them of the greatest length ; it is true 
this very day, and true for every reader of this work, 
"him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast 
out." The strong negative which is equivalent to 
the most powerful affirmative, "so far from casting 
out, I will cordially embrace, and kiss, and welcome 
him." In noticing this part of my subject, I may 
observe that the ancient Pelagians, as they are 
called, have pleaded this as evidence of the fact that 
the sinner has in himself inherent sufficient strength 
to arise and go to God. It would be absurd to ex- 
pect that a parable should convey every doctrine of 
Christianity, however minute, in so small a space. 
But there is a text which plainly settles the matter : 
"No man can come to me, except the Father which 
hath sent me draw him;" and as Scripture is always 
in harmony with itself, we are perfectly sure that this 
great truth underlies the simple statement of the pa- 
rable : the Socinians or English Presbyterians have 
also quoted this passage as evidence that all that the 
sinner needs to enable him to go to God and find ac- 
ceptance with him is simply repentance ; that he needs 
no atonement, that he needs no mediator, and that 
there is one way to God, and that way is repentance; 
and that repentance alone is sure to be accepted of 
God. The answer to this is the statement of the 
apostle in his epistle to the Hebrews : not " having 
repentance," but "having a high priest over the house 

33* 



116 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full 
assurance.' ' And again he says, « having therefore 
boldness to enter into the holiest," not "by repent- 
ance" but " by the blood of Jesus, by a new and 
living way;" and, therefore, we are told in a parallel 
passage, that that way is the blood of Christ, the 
element of boldness is the fact that Christ died, and 
that the path to God is. not repentance, but "a new 
and living way." Let me also state that this God 
who is here typified or represented by the father, 
sees not only the penitent a great way off, but he 
sees the thought of penitence in the penitent's heart 
a great way off, before that thought is adequately 
conceived and realized by himself. The father saw 
his son a great way off, ran to him, fell upon his 
neck, and embraced him. God our father in heaven 
sees the first impulse of a penitent's heart, he hears 
the most silent expression of a penitent's grief; he 
sees the first tear that starts from a penitent's eye; 
" there is not a thought of our heart, but lo, Lord, 
thou knowest it altogether." If there be then genuine 
repentance inwrought by the Spirit of God in the 
heart of any reader of this book, God sees it. It 
is an element of grace that will issue in glory ; it 
is the evidence of the commencement of that work 
that will be crowned with everlasting acceptance before 
God in heaven. 

The father said not one word blaming or reflecting 
upon the son's conduct. He was quite willing to for- 
get all in the joy that he felt at his restoration and 
return ; yet we perceive that it was after the father 
had fallen upon his neck and kissed him, that the son 
said, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and be- 



THE RECEPTION. H7 

fore thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son." 
In other words, genuine repentance is not something 
that precedes forgiveness, but something that follows 
it. No man ever repented truly before he embraced 
the Saviour. He embraces the Saviour first; he re- 
pents from the heart next. It is the kiss of reconci- 
liation that starts the tear of genuine contrition ; it is 
the rays that are radiated from the countenance of a 
father that thaw the frozen heart, and turn the streams 
of sorrows which were felt before, into streams of ge- 
nuine repentance and evangelical contrition. The pre- 
scription of the gospel is not that you are to try and 
dig repentance from your heart first, and then go to 
Christ, but you are to go to the Saviour first, and to 
your Father in him, and leave him to give the repent- 
ance you need. It is not repentance that introduces 
us to Christ, but Christ that introduces us to repent- 
ance. He is « exalted a Prince and a Saviour, to give 
repentance to Israel;" and, therefore, the application 
must be made to him as a Prince and a Saviour, before 
that repentance is felt. The son resolved to repent 
before he went to his father : but he only repented 
after his father had accepted and welcomed him. This 
is very beautifully expressed by the prophet Ezekiel, 
in chap, xxxvi. 25 — 27, speaking of the Jews, " Then 
will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be 
clean : from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, 
will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, 
and a new spirit will I put within you ; and I will take 
away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give 
you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within 
you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye 
shall keep my judgments and do them." Verse 31 



118 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

"Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and 
shall loathe yourselves in your own sight." All this 
is the gift of God to them ; and then, as the result of 
that gift, they give all the evidence of genuine repent- 
ance, and of a holy life. And so he tells them that it 
is after they have tasted this they will repent, and turn 
from their evil ways. So in the same manner, in Ezek. 
xvi. 60: "I will remember my covenant with thee in 
the days of thy youth, and I will establish unto thee an 
everlasting covenant." And after this — "thoushalt 
remember thy way, and be ashamed, when thou shalt 
receive thy sisters, thine elder and thy younger : and 
I will give them unto thee for daughters, but not by 
thy covenant." He speaks first of the gift of his 
grace, of the expression of reconciliation : and he then 
adds, " they will bring forth the fruits of the spirit, 
and of a holy life afterward." And so in the case of 
David : w T hen did David write that genuine expression 
of genuine repentance, Psalm li. ? — not before he was 
forgiven. It was after Nathan had come from God, 
and said to David, "thy sins be forgiven thee," that 
David went forth, and expressed in poetry the inmost 
feeling of his soul, " Against thee, thee only have I 
sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." It is thus 
that the storm may rend the heart, and fill it with sor- 
rows ; but it is only the Sun of righteousness that 
melts the heart and makes it break into genuine re- 
pentance. Repentance, therefore, takes place after, 
not before acceptance with God. In the first instance 
the prodigal said, " I will arise and go to my father, 
and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against 
heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be 
called thy son ; make me as one of thy hired servants." 



THE RECEPTION. HQ 

But this last clause is omitted after his acceptance by 
his father, he then says only, " Father, I have sinned 
against heaven and in thy sight, and am no more wor- 
thy to be called thy son." Why was this omitted? 
I answer, that in the very first relation this clause was 
the only evidence of faltering in the filial hope and con- 
fidence of the prodigal, because he ought to have known 
that either he must be received as a son, or not be re- 
ceived at all. But when he saw the expression of his 
father's love, and felt the warmth of that paternal 
kiss, and when he was embraced with so little of recri- 
mination, and so much of cordial welcome, he knew 
that there was the love in that father's heart which 
would never leave him to be a servant, but would re- 
store him instantly to the dignity and to the privilege 
of a son. If he had persisted, after his father had 
thus welcomed him, in still asking for a servant's 
place, the world would have called it humility, the gos- 
pel would have called it monkery. It is not humility 
to refuse the higher place when the master bids us 
take it. The highest humility is to take the highest 
place when the great Master invites us to it. So this 
son felt it : the servant's place, which was the petition 
of the distant prodigal, is omitted and forgotten the 
instant he is accepted and feels the affection of an ac- 
cepted and a welcomed son. And I can easily feel 
how this part of the parable must have touched some 
of the Pharisees. Their objection was that Christ re- 
ceived sinners. But, I doubt not, some of these Pha- 
risees were fathers ; and there are sympathies and 
affections in a father's heart which tradition and 
superstition and wickedness are not able utterly to 
extirpate : and when the Pharisees heard the touching 



120 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

and beautiful statement that a father rejoiced when his 
lost prodigal son was brought home, there was not a 
father among them that did not blush at the objection 
he had uttered, and feel that never man spake like this 
man. When the prodigal was received by his father, 
what did the father say? Not one syllable of repre- 
hension; when God forgives, my dear reader, he for- 
gives completely. We never forget the sin : but God 
forgives completely and perfectly, so that it is no more 
thought of. The father took scarcely time to listen to 
the confession of his son ; he could not hear any more, 
but cut it short in the middle of his anxiety that there 
should be a real welcome : instead of listening to the 
confession, he turned round and said to his servants, 
" Bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and put 
shoes on his feet." " The best robe," is our transla- 
tion of the words, but it is extremely expressive in the 
original ; rr y v gtoXyjv ttjv Tzpcbrrp^ the robe, that first one. 
that most distinguished, that chiefest, that best one: 
and this seems to confirm what I stated, in explaining 
the parable of the marriage feast, that there wer^ 
wedding-garments hung upon pegs in the hall, and an 
individual had only to take one and put it on. The 
father then says to the servant, Bring forth one of 
them ; there is going to be a great festival, a high 
feast ; he must wear a wedding-robe : take from him 
the rags which have degraded him as the prodigal; 
clothe him in the robe that indicates the accepted son ; 
admit him to the joyous festival, and let all begin to 
be merry. We have this very spectacle beautifully ex- 
hibited in Zech. iii. : « And he showed me Joshua the 
high-priest, standing before the angel of the Lord" — 
i. e. Christ Jesus — " and Satan standing at his right 



THE RECEPTION. 121 

hand to resist him. And the Lord said unto Satan, 
The Lord rebuke thee, Satan ; even the Lord that 
hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee ; is not this a 
brand plucked out of the fire ? Now Joshua was cloth- 
ed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel. 
And he answered'' — i. e. Christ — "and spake unto 
those that stood before him, saying, Take away the 
filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, 
Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, 
and I will clothe thee with change of raiment" — the 
wedding-garment. — « And I said, Let them set a fair 
mitre upon his head. So they set a fair mitre upon 
his head, and clothed him with garments. And the 
Angel of the Lord stood by." In other words, the 
ministers and ambassadors of Christ are to show us how 
all the rags of nature may be completely put away ; 
how the iniquities of a past lifetime may be blotted 
out in the precious blood of the Lamb ; and how may 
be put on, instead, the glorious righteousness of Him 
who is the Lord our Righteousness, who was made sin 
for us that we might be made the righteousness of 
God : and by and through whom we may be pre- 
sented, like Joshua, clothed in fair garments, or like 
the prodigal, in a wedding-robe, fit for the high festival 
of joy. The father also added, "put a ring on his 
finger." We read that in ancient times rings w T ere 
invariably used for seals. The ring was that which 
sealed the letter, the document, or the deed. We have 
therefore in Scripture frequent allusions to their use. 
Thus in Eph. i. 13, "Ye were sealed with the Holy 
Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inherit- 
ance." So Gal. iv. 6: "Because ye are sons, God 
hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, 
L 



122 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS, 

crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore, thou art no more a 
servant, but a son ; and if a son, then an heir of God 
through Christ.' ' You see, therefore, that giving this 
ring or seal was the evidence that he was no more a 
servant, nor to seek a servant's place, but a son that 
had received a father's welcome. It is thus God deals 
with his own people, though not always. He takes 
away our sins through the efficacy of atoning blood ; 
he clothes us with the garment of righteousness, which 
is our only title to eternal happiness ; but, in addition 
to this, he gives us the Holy Spirit of God to dwell in 
our hearts, and to be within those hearts an augury 
of our everlasting happiness, a first-fruit and earnest 
of the glory and rest that remains for all the people 
of God. He next commands, "put shoes on his feet." 
In ancient times, servants did not wear shoes, as is 
very much the case in the northern parts of Scotland 
still. Besides it is plain that the prodigal's must have 
been quite worn out : hence putting shoes on his feet 
was not only necessary, but it was also a symbol of 
his being raised from the place of a servant, and placed 
in the relationship of son ; and it implied duties. Thus 
the apostle speaks of being shod with the preparation 
of the gospel of peace : so it taught that this prodigal 
was not to wander any more, but, like Abraham, to 
"walk before God;" like Enoch, to walk with God, 
and to lead a life that should be the evidence of his 
sonship, and holiness that should prove whose he was 
and at how great a price he had been redeemed. The 
father, when he introduced him thus clothed with new 
raiment, with shoes on his feet and a ring on his finger, 
commanded them " to bring the fatted calf, and kill, 
and make merry. ' ' The fa tted calf was killed — plainly 



THE RECEPTION. J23 

not for sacrifice — but simply for the feast, or the 
festival to which they were called. To say that this 
represents the atonement of Christ, is to misrepresent 
and misinterpret a plain passage of Scripture, Then, 
"Behold, this my son was dead and is alive again, 
was lost and is found.'' 

You will perceive that the elder son was at a dis- 
tance labouring in the field. He was not present ; it 
is not at all improbable that sons and daughters had 
been born to that father during the long estrangement 
and absence of the prodigal son. It was these that he 
called together ; and the language he used seems to just- 
ify this ; for the father is very special in pointing out 
the fact that this is his son ; " this is my son, you, the 
rest of my children, have never seen him ; you had no 
sympathy with my feelings while I sat in the midst of 
you, so sad and full of thought ; and those absent looks 
of mine, which you thought so strange, were expressive 
of my mental wanderings after the son w T hom I had 
lost. That prodigal has come to his right mind ; he is 
now restored ; this is he — your brother, my son : he 
was dead and is alive again ; he was lost and is 
found." He therefore calls upon them all to make 
merry ; and it is plain that it was not the servants who 
were making merry, because, in the subsequent part 
of the chapter, the servant, who seems to have been 
merely ministering at the festival, was called aside by 
the elder son to explain what these things meant. The 
presumption is therefore that there were other sons and 
daughters: the prodigal was restored to that happy 
group, and all were bidden to rejoice. That home in 
which there was long one note discordant, the echo of 
its dissonance deepest in the paternal heart, had that 

34 



124 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

note now merged and lost in the harmony of happy 
feeling, amid the sunshine of glad faces. Here the 
parable strictly closes ; just as the lost sheep when re- 
covered by the shepherd became to him matter of joy, 
and he called and bade them rejoice ; just as the hidden 
coin when recovered by the woman was matter of joy 
to her, and made her call her friends together to re- 
joice with her, so the lost prodigal recovered, the dead 
son alive, is here exhibited as a source of joy to the 
father. He calls together the inmates of his house, 
spreads the social board, displays all his riches in order 
to express the gratitude he felt that the lost prodigal 
again is found. So our Lord shows there is joy in the 
presence of the angels of God, when a lost sinner re- 
pents and returns to God: as there is joy at every 
hearth and in every home when a lost son is restored. 
How is it that the Pharisees have no sympathy with 
the angels above, no sympathy with homes that are 
thus happy ; so much so that they excluded themselves 
from nature itself, in order to exclude Jesus from being 
received and recognised as the Messiah? 



CHAPTER IX. 

"Now his elder son was in the field: and as ho came and drew nigh to 
the house, he heard music and dancing." — Luke xv. 25. 

I NOW come to another point in the narrative, viz, 
the conduct of the elder son upon this occasion. The 
elder son, you will perceive, in ver. 25, was in the 
field, and as he came near to the house, he heard music 
and dancing. This clause in the parable is full of 
meaning, and not the least proof that it is one of the 
brightest gems in the Bible; whatever side you pre- 
sent, it reflects rays of that love which gives pardon 
to the guiltiest, and forgiveness to the greatest sin. 
The elder son was labouring in the field. How beau- 
tifully does this contrast with the conduct of the 
younger ! The younger went off from his father, and 
wasted his substance ; the elder seemed to have re- 
mained at home, an industrious and laborious son, 
doing his father's and his own business. He hears 
from a distance — and yet strange, one would think, 
that his attention had not been drawn to this before — 
the sound of music and of dancing, which was the ex- 
pression of the joy that they felt. Whether music 
and dancing are lawful, is not here discussed or de- 
cided. I cannot conceive that there is any more harm 
in moving tRe feet than in moving the fingers : it is 
not in dancing that the sin lies, but in the accompani- 
ments which too generally have been connected with 
it. He heard music and dancing, Avhich are in various 
countries the expression of delight and joy. We no- 
tice at once how the surly temper of the elder son de- 
l 2 125 



126 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

velops itself. You will see there was something here 
that formed a very prominent feature in his character. 
If he had had the right feelings of a son, he would 
have rushed in, knowing that there was perfect wel- 
come for him in his father's home, a cordial embrace 
among his own relatives. But the bad temper of the 
man held him back. Instead of rushing in, he stands 
without, evidently under the power of bad passions. 
He calls a servant — a circumstance of itself the evi- 
dence of some estrangement. He calls a servant, and 
asks in an imperious tone, demanding rather than ask- 
ing, explanation of what seemed strange, and contrary 
to his wishes. We may notice, in the reply, evidence 
of the exquisite accuracy and truthfulness that per- 
vade this parable. The servant said to him, " Thy 
brother is come, and thy father hath killed the fatted 
calf, because he hath received him safe and sound." 
The father was overwhelmed with thoughts of the 
moral transformation of his son, "he that was dead is 
alive again, he that was lost is found." The poor 
servant, who was a mere stander-by, felt no connection 
with the inner feeling ; he attended merely to duty, 
and had no sympathy except with outward facts ; and 
therefore he said, your brother has been received by his 
father " safe and sound ;" none of his limbs are broken 
or features defaced ; he is received safe and sound. 
He knew nothing beyond this, nor cared for knowing 
any thing more. The father's statement*was, he was 
lost to happiness, to his home, and his God; he is 
now found. He that was dead in trespasses and sins, 
is now spiritually alive. But the servant, who had no 
understanding of this kind, said, "he has received 
him safe and sound, and therefore thy father hath 
killed the fatted calf." Now the elder son, if he had 



THE ELDER BROTHER. 127 

been a right-minded brother, or a right-minded son, 
instead of hesitating for a moment, when he heard 
that his brother had actually come back, would have 
rushed into his presence, and cordially and heartily 
welcomed him home, and thanked God that his brother 
was restored. But, instead of this, we are told, he 
was angry. Angry at what ? that the lost was found, 
that the dead was alive, that a dear brother was re- 
stored, that his father was happy : there must have 
been some speck of wickedness in the core of that 
elder brother's heart, or he could not thus have felt. 
It is added, that "he would not come in," just as if 
he could thus revenge himself on what was doing 
within without his cognizance. "He was angrj^, and 
would not come in." Then what did the father? 
Beautiful indeed is the affection of a father's heart ! 
exceeded only by that which nestles in a mother's ! 
The father, though he saw his son acting in a manner 
so unworthy of the affections and duties of a son, did 
not utter one word of anger or rebuke, but "went out 
and entreated him to come in." He ought not to 
have needed such entreaty. But the elder brother, 
answering, said to his father, "Lo, these many years 
have I served thee, and thou never gavest me a kid" 
— even that, so much smaller a thing than the fatted 
calf — "thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make 
merry with my friends. But as soon as this thy son 
is come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, 
thou hast killed for him the fatted calf." See how 
expressive this language is of the chagrin, the envy, 
the hatred of that elder brother's heart. He does 
not say, " as soon as my brother is come," but " aa 
soon as this thy son" this contemptible fellow, thy 

34* 



128 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

son, "which hath devoured thy living with harlots." 
That was not matter of fact; the elder son had had 
his share, and the younger had had his. It had 
ceased to be his father's, and became his own. There 
was no evidence that he had wasted his father's living 
"with harlots." This was a mere guess; because 
there was nothing in his past history to warrant it. 
It may have been, or it may not ; but there was no 
evidence on which the son could say so. And what is 
only matter of conjecture never should be made the 
subject of current rumour. And next he says, "as 
soon as he was come." Now mark the words again. 
He does not say, as soon as he repented and reformed 
himself, and became a better man, but, "as soon as 
he was come:" as if there were sinfulness and exces- 
sive indulgence on the part of the father — "as soon 
as this thy son is come, thou hast killed for him," not 
a kid, a little thing, which thou never gavest me, 
"but thou hast actually killed the fatted calf." 
Envy, jealousy, ill-will, uncharitableness, were all 
compressed into this speech. It is laden with such 
bitter vituperation, that one can scarcely find words 
adequate to express one's hatred of it. But if the 
elder son had not only seen the fatted calf killed, and 
the cordial embrace which his brother received — but 
had gone in and beheld this son, "who hath devoured 
thy living with harlots," clothed in a splendid robe, 
seated on the best seat at the festival, his passion, 
already fierce enough, might have lost all bounds ; 
and, like Cain, he might have gone out again a fratri- 
cide. More probably, perhaps, if he had crossed the 
threshold, and beheld the scene of gladness and grati- 
tude that beamed in every countenance, he would not 
(I retract the opinion) have acted like Cain ; he 



THE ELDER BROTHER. 129 

would have joined in the merriment, and danced and 
sung too. The language that he used is extremely 
like the language of the younger son, when he said. 
" Give me the portion of goods that falleth to my 
share." But let us hear the reply of the father: 
" Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is 
thine." You have enjoyed all this plenty, you have 
had merely to ask and you have received. You have 
no reason to complain ; instead of indulging in com- 
plaint, you ought to be thankful. 

The last question that remains, is, who is this elder 
son ? Probably the best and most straightforward 
answer is to say, we do not know. I am certain, on 
second and more elaborate reflection that it cannot 
represent or have the least reference to the angels. 
The elder brother cannot be the type of the angels, 
for the whole language that precedes is utterly incon- 
sistent with this interpretation. Was it designed to 
represent the carping, envious, bitter-hearted Pha- 
risee ? This is much more likely. But then the father 
says, " Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have 
is thine." Could this be applied to men who were 
simply hypocrites, and had no religion at all ? I feel 
this an insuperable difficulty ; may Ave suppose that 
our Lord applied it to the Pharisees, e concesso, i. e. 
hypothetically : " Suppose that you are what you 
pretend to be ; suppose that you are really holy men 
instead of being mere pretenders to holiness, in such 
a case every thing ought to lead you rather to rejoice 
that the lost is found, and the dead made alive again:" 
if so, the language used by the elder son would have 
been in the simplest language, the severest rebuke con- 
veyed to those Pharisees. My conviction, however, is, 
and I have tried every resource in order to find out 



130 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

who the elder son is, and in none do I find the diffi- 
culty satisfactorily solved ; perhaps the best interpre- 
tation is that given by Trench,* that this elder brother, 
is the type and symbol of a man strictly honest, just, 
industrious — a Christian, in short, of the very lowest 
possible grade. For how many prejudices, passions, 
sins are compatible with real Christianity still living 
in the heart ! I say it is possible then to suppose he 
W T as a Christian of the very lowest possible type, — 
"an outdoor Christian, not an indoor Christian, ,, — 
one who laboured cheerfully in the out-field, who had 
little sympathy with the enjoyments, and little more 
with the sweets, of home, — one who made very little 
progress in the knowledge and experience of the truth; 
perhaps a semi-Papist of that day, who had the spirit 
of exclusiveness characteristic of that sect, and wished 
none to share in what he enjoyed : or a Tractarian or 
Puseyite of that day, who thought, for instance, that 
if a minister of another national church or a Dissenter 
should be admitted to drink at the same stream, and 
draw from the same fount, he would be sure to drink it 
dry, or at least to pollute it. You may suppose him 
to have been a Christian, but a Christian with a mor- 
bid heart and prejudiced mind, with much of the old 
Adam still lingering in his body. He was jealous that 
a recovered sinner should rank with him, or that a re- 
turned prodigal should receive a welcome that he had 
not. Or we may suppose that he was not a Christian 
at all, — but only a moral, upright, honourable man, a 
stranger to spiritual religion : and is it not a fact that 
there are in the world men that shame Christians by 

* In the course of my lecturing on this parable, I received a note from 
a hearer, complaining I had not acknowledged my obligations to Trench. 
The answer is, Trench and I are both very deeply indebted to Olshausen. 



THE ELDER BROTHER. J31 

their honour, their candour, their integrity ? There 
are merchants, I believe, in England, who would not 
utter a falsehood, if it were to save their fortunes ; 
whose word is recognised in distant lands as equivalent 
to a foreigner's or a stranger's oath. Who does not 
rejoice at this, and praise God that it is so ? You will 
find in this city men of the strictest honour — who give 
to Coesar all that Caesar can demand — whose homes 
are the scenes of the richest hospitality — whose hands 
are ever in their pockets in ministry to the wants of 
the orphan and the widow — and all this they may be, 
and yet they may not be regenerated men, the children 
of God : for it is possible to keep the last six com- 
mandments of the law perfectly, and yet to forget the 
first four : their relationship to their fellows may be 
perfect ; their relationship to God may be altogether 
neglected : the very beauty and perfection of the human 
graces by which they are adorned tempts them to lean 
upon them as their merits and their title to God's fa- 
vour. The elder son may have been some such one as 
this. And who knows not that when they are told to 
wash at the same fountain, be clothed in the same 
righteousness, lie down in the same level, seek for- 
giveness not because of what they are, but without 
money, and without price, that these are offended at 
the requirements of the gospel ; they cannot conceive 
that they are to be classed in the matter of acceptance 
before God with the lowest, the vilest, the guiltiest of 
mankind. But the most accomplished man, whom all 
the juries in the world would acquit if accused, — and 
whom all his fellows would applaud — that man and the 
thief upon the cross, or the criminal of twenty years, 
must just seek mercy, and forgiveness, and pardon, 
freely and in the same form, and from the same foun- 



132 CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. 

tain, and on the same ground, and be saved together, 
or remain separate for ever. 

If he be not any of the three that I have men- 
tioned, the elder son may be a feature in the parable 
altogether independent, for we are not always to con- 
strue each point in a parable as if it had a distinct and 
separate meaning. We may suppose that some are 
added to make the narrative cohere perfectly and com- 
pletely. But I think there is meaning in it ; certainly 
it teaches one lesson, which is not to be envious of the 
success of others. Let us not be jealous of the re- 
ception of others. Let not the member of one com- 
munion be grieved that another prospers : let not one 
minister lament that another is more successful in 
winning souls to Christ. Let us rejoice with the an- 
gels in heaven who are in the home of our Father, let 
us rejoice wheresoever, and in whatsoever church, and 
under whatsoever ministry a lost soul is found, a dead 
soul is quickened. My dear reader, whoever be the 
elder son, whatever be the explanation of the other 
features in the parable, we are certain that we belong 
now or have belonged to the lost sheep ; we are or 
were the lost coin ; we are or were the prodigal and 
stray son : Are we reclaimed ? have we returned ? 
have we arisen and gone to our Father ? There is no- 
thing between you in the strange and distant land 
where you have planted yourself, and instant recep- 
tion by that father who is our Father in heaven, but 
your own reluctance to go to him. Every obstruc- 
tion on God's part is removed ; the only obstruction 
is in your heart. It is still true — 

"This Man receiveth sinners." 



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